


Yin, Yang and Squiggly

by quietprofanity



Series: Yin, Yang and Squiggly Universe [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dubious Consent, Futanari, Knotting, Mpreg, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:19:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietprofanity/pseuds/quietprofanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Omegaverse AU fanfic. The four nations aren’t just divided into benders. In a world where young men and women grow up to be submissive Yin, dominant Yang or fall somewhere in-between, our heroes discover who they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Air Nomads

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of pairings in this fanfic. I don’t want to go into what happens but basically this story is about our heroes as biological sex freaks in a pansexual world and you can expect f/m, m/m and f/f and other combos if you journey within.

~*~*~

“Hey! Hey, Aang, take a look of this!”

Aang groaned as Tian pulled his hand away and pointed over the side of the bridge. Tian never said anything without punctuating it with a gesture, often in another person’s ribs, but despite the pain in his side, Aang looked.

What he saw were two men in Air Nomad clothes and tattoos walking toward the underpass. One of them, obviously a Yin, was so fat with child it seemed hard for him to stand. His Yang walked close by, his brows creased with worry, his shoulders hunched up as if ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

“Woah,” Aang whispered. “Lovers. Why do you think they’re here?”

Tian shrugged. “Probably to have that baby, by the looks of it.”

The Yin suddenly let out a pained moan. Aang couldn’t hear much more from where he was, but the Yin’s distress seemed to throw the Yang into a panic. The Yang said something to which the Yin shook his head, but the Yang was persistent, and, after a few moments of negotiation, the two of them moved to a patch of grass on the side of the road. The Yin sat down. The Yang immediately crouched at the Yin’s feet and, after slipping off the Yin’s sandals, began massaging them.

Tian laughed at the sight of this.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Aang said. He rested his chin on his hands as he watched them. “It’s probably hard to be a Yang, having to wait on a Yin all the time and take care of him, and then after all that work the Yin can reject him after the baby comes.”

“Oh, people who are Yang don’t mind,” Tian yawned and folded his hands behind his head. “They’re more knots than brains anyway.”

“Tian, that’s not nice.”

“But it’s true. If we let Yang people up to their own devices they’d mate with anyone they’d see and never take care of their Yins. It would be chaos. It’s like that in the Fire Nation. The Yangs just knock Yins down on the street, mate with them whether they want it or not and then don’t even take care of them or the babies.”

Aang didn’t think that was true, but arguing with Tian when he was convinced of something, no matter how wrong, was like trying to clean the slime off an eel-toad. Today Aang didn’t have the patience. He watched as the Yang snuggled up behind his Yin and let his Yin’s head rest on his chest. Aang sighed, a part of him hopeful that he would feel happiness like that one day.

“Yep. The minute that baby’s out that Yang won’t care anymore,” Tian said with a snort. “That’s good. I’d like to have a lot Yangs. I think I’m going to want all of my children to be different. I want to have a lot, you know? Like a dozen. How about you? You’re a Yin, too, right?”

“Yeah,” Aang said. Most of the Air Nomads were, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when he found out. “I haven’t thought about kids, though.”

“Have you gone into heat?”

“Not yet, but the last few months I’ve gotten sick around the same time, so Gyatso says it’ll happen soon. I’ve been meditating.”

Tian shrugged. “You never know. You could be one of those perverts who aren’t either.”

“I do know,” Aang said bitterly.

“Okay.”

Aang scowled. Below them, the Yin was clumsily trying to stand. The attempt made the Yang frantic, and he fretted as the Yin found his wobbly feet.

Tian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, half-crushed fruit pie.

“Tian, no.”

“Oh, come on.” Tian held up the pie. “You don’t think it would be fun to get a Yang annoyed?”

Aang sighed, but he was never one to pass up a good prank, so he readied the air-missile.

~*~*~

The Air Nomads had a deserved reputation for being patient and understanding in all things. But even the most tolerant monk couldn’t stand teaching young airbenders about sex.

Aang was not the most receptive pupil. All right, he admitted he planned to spend the majority of the class sitting in the back drawing sky bisons on his papyrus, but he’d heard the lecture before. He was taking the class with Monk Tashi not because he thought he needed it, but because Monk Gyatso had recommended a refresher before his first heat.

Anyway, he wasn’t as bad as the 10-year-olds who were hearing it for the first time.

“Silence!” Monk Tashi hissed for the third time in fifteen minutes.

The class quieted again, but some of the younger boys clearly had trouble holding it together. One kid couldn’t stop shaking and snorting while his slightly older brother elbowed him in the side. 

“Now, if you’ve all had your fun,” Monk Tashi said in an imperious voice, “who can tell me where babies come from?”

About five kids in the front row raised their hands. The one who was picked delivered an “um”-filled mangling of the legend involving pelican eggs for three minutes before the monk couldn’t take it anymore and interrupted him.

“Many of the animals that roam the earth today are not the same as the animals that were alive a millennia ago. Fish from the sea joined with the birds from the air. Animals in the most verdant forests became one with animals that lived among fiery volcanoes. They are the result of many, many years of fusion, and we humans are no exception.”

Aang let out a yawn that was louder than he thought. Monk Tashi glared at him, and he tried to smile as widely as he could.

Monk Tashi sighed and continued, “Humans may be the most similar to apes, but in our mating we are more like dogs.”

“Hee-hee, mating!” giggled a boy in the first row.

“We mate like wolves! Awooooooo!” shrieked another boy in the second.

“Be quiet! As I was saying, in addition to being like dogs, we also share a common thread with sea creatures that can be both male and female, or have the traits of one while appearing to be the other. Yes, Chin?”

“Then why aren’t we called MonkeyFishDogs?” the boy from the second row asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Can I call us MonkeyFishDogs?”

“No.”

An 11-year-old sitting two seats down from Chin snickered loudly “Chin’s a MonkeyFishDog because he is uuuuugly!”

“Silence!” Monk Tashi yelled. A blast of wind rushed through the classroom so suddenly Aang’s papyrus was almost ripped out of his hand. The rest of the boys sat up straight and quiet.

“Now then, some believe that our ancestors may have been more like other monkeys. Once all men were like Yang, once all women were like Yin. Some cultures, notably the Northern Water Tribe, favor a return to such a state. But this is not who we are. Our sisters in the Eastern and Western Air temples can be Yin and Yang just as we men in the Southern and Northern temples. Now,” Monk Tashi exhaled deeply, as if readying himself for something unpleasant, “I will show you pictures of a male Yin and Yang.”

As expected, the class degraded into laughter and hooting as Monk Tashi unrolled the wall scrolls. Aang couldn’t help laughing a bit himself this time. The pictures were clinical, but that seemed to heighten the embarrassment of seeing them rather than induce detachment. The top two pictures showed a Yin male from the front and back, his lower body drawn to include his internal and external organs: the knot-less vestigial penis, the anus, the heat and lubrication glands, the internal womb. The kids seemed to snicker at every word, and as Monk Tashi moved on to the Yang male, pointed out the engorged penis and the knot, they’d lost it.

Aang zoned out almost completely at this point. Somehow Monk Tashi made it through the diagrams of the female Yin and Yang, but they weren’t much different from each other. The Yin female had a larger womb connected to her vagina instead of her anus that included the heat and lubrication glands. The Yang female had a vagina as well, but this one had no glands and her clitoris, which was connected to a prostate, had the capacity to grow to about the size of a Yin male’s.

This wasn’t really helping, Aang thought. It had been almost a month since he last got sick, and he was more worried about how the heat would feel than anything else. It occurred to him that the monks never talked much about that. Sure, they said if you didn’t meditate you’d be mindless and uncontrollable, but nothing about the experience of being uncontrolled. They told you how sex worked, how babies were made, what could go wrong, but nothing about how it felt and how to deal with that. It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

“So,” Monk Tashi said. “Any questions?”

About fifteen different hands went up.

Monk Tashi shuddered and glowered at a boy frantically waving his arms. “Yes, you.”

“If Yangs' penises are that big, how much do they pee?”

Monk Tashi sighed. “It doesn’t look like that normally. It grows when the Yang is ready to make a baby. I explained this. They go to the bathroom just like Yins.”

“What if they have to pee when it’s big like that?” asked another boy. “Will the pee get stuck in the knot?”

“No. That is disgusting. Does anyone have a real question?”

“Has a boy Yin ever thought they were having a baby but really just had to poop?” asked one child.

“Can one of those in-between people make themselves pregnant?” asked another.

“Somebody told me that when waterbenders like each other they can bend the stuff that comes out of your butt and throw it in the other person’s face! Is that true?”

The last question came from the kid sitting next to Aang and Aang, like everyone else in the room, could only look at him with a mixture of revulsion and horror. This lasted about five seconds. Then Aang began to giggle. Then he began to laugh. Then everyone else did.

“That. Is. It!” Monk Tashi yelled.

Another blast of wind rocketed through the room. It was enough to knock a few of the younger kids in the front row over, but that only made everyone laugh harder.

“Stop laughing! You’re revolting,” Monk Tashi was fuming now, stomping his feet and shaking his fists. Aang had never seen him this angry. “This is the next generation of spiritual leaders? This pack of hyena-boars that can’t take the creation of life seriously? That ask about such perverted rumors and practices that they shouldn’t even know? It would be better if the Air Nomads were wiped from the face of the earth! You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

Aang felt his stomach drop and he wasn’t sure why. Monk Tashi had always been the most tightly-wound and conservative of the monks, and he guessed the class had been more out of control than usual. Still, this seemed extreme, even for him.

“Out! All of you, out! And if I see any of you on gliders today you’ll be back in here for punishment.”

The class, Aang included, erupted in a round of disappointed “Awws.”

“Out!” Monk Tashi repeated.

Aang sighed as he prepared to file out with the class. He hoped flying on Appa wasn’t included in the “no gliders” rule. As he started to walk out the door, Monk Tashi grasped him on the shoulder.

“I’m especially disappointed in you, Aang.”

“What?” Aang exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You encouraged them. More than that, you sat in the back of the class not paying attention or setting a good example. You’ll be a man in a few years. It’s time to start acting like it!”

Aang made his way back to his cell in a cloud of anger. He wasn’t the only 12-year-old in the class. He wasn’t the only one who’d been laughing or bored. He’d been singled out for some reason, and he didn’t know why, but knew that it wasn’t fair.

The anger had mellowed into aggravation by the time he got to his bed and laid on top of the covers. Maybe his heat would come tomorrow and he wouldn’t have to listen to Monk Tashi talk about it again. Yeah. That would be nice. That would solve a lot of his problems.

Except for the part where he still didn’t know what would happen. Or when. Or how bad it would be.

Aang sighed and stared at the ceiling, thinking and worrying until he fell asleep.

~*~*~

The most surprising part of the heat was that for the first few hours, Aang didn’t even know it was happening.

Aang had come down to breakfast a few days after his disastrous class with Monk Tashi, and he’d only gotten a few bites of congee down before one of the few older Yang monks walked by, took a large sniff of him, then suddenly ran away.

Monk Gyatso was at Aang’s side within moments.

“Is this really it?” Aang asked as Monk Gyatso led him through the temple to one of the isolation cells. “I don’t even feel sick. Is something wrong with me?”

“No, Aang. It’s common for a Yang to be able to smell a Yin is ready for heat before the Yin knows it.”

Aang groaned. “There’s so much I don’t know. I think I just want this to be over with.”

“Have patience, boy.”

The cell was sparse, equipped with only a white-sheeted bed; a lit, long-burning candle; a large metal tub of water; towels and another sheet to be used for a tunic.

“You should change and begin to meditate as soon as possible,” Monk Gyatso said. “Someone will come by every few hours or so to check on you until it’s over.”

“Sounds good,” Aang muttered.

Monk Gyatso smiled. “Try to be happy, Aang. You’re growing up. This is an auspicious day.”

Aang looked around the room as Monk Gyatso closed the door. “An auspicious day spent locked in a cell away from everyone and trying not to go crazy … right.”

After changing into the tunic, Aang sat on the bed with his legs crossed. He’d been trained in meditation for so long that going into a trance was like breathing. It wasn’t too long before he felt himself in that familiar airy, floaty place. He enjoyed it, and it girded him for whatever was to come.

~*~*~

It began as a warm sickness from somewhere far away. At first it was small, just a minor distraction, but then it increasingly became more insistent. There was an ache, an itch, deep inside him, something that threatened to fling him back into the real world through the force of its hunger.

Aang was almost curious enough to let it, but the fear of waking up alone and out of his mind made him pull back.

It was difficult, though. Even in his meditative haze he could feel the physical changes happening to him, could feel his penis get hard and the wetness oozing out of him. Aang moaned, and even though he knew he was using the full force of his lungs, he could barely hear it.

This was bad. He had to go deeper. Aang thought of the mantra Gyatso had taught him: “I am more than a Yin. I am more than my body.” He repeated it in his mind again and again, repeated it until he knew nothing but those words.

Then something happened.

~*~*~

The need. The need was the first thing Aang registered, first thing he could register. It was so powerful he could barely think of anything else.

“Help …” Aang felt his knees buckle beneath him as he fell on his hands into the snow. Oh gods, he needed to mate. He needed it more than air. “Someone help me, please!”

Aang heard the sound of someone panting off in the distance. He looked up and saw a woman running through the snow. She was absolutely beautiful. Her long hair fell in waves over her Water Tribe clothes and Aang had the urge to fling himself at her, but he couldn’t move.

The woman stumbled, and a burly Water Tribe man ran up behind her. Immediately upon seeing him Aang felt the man was familiar and knew he was a Yang.

“Don’t you run from me!” the man bellowed. “We know this is what you want.”

Aang shuddered. He could feel the man’s hunger for the woman.

“Kuruk,” the woman moaned. “Kuruk, don’t be mad. I just wanted to be far away from everyone else.”

The woman started to remove her clothes, but Kuruk pounced on her. It all seemed to happen so fast. Kuruk’s desire for her was overwhelming. He felt an unbearable need to make the woman his and his alone, would fight to the death anyone else who tried to touch her. He released his knot inside her, and wanted to keep her on it forever.

Aang felt something burst inside of him, and then it all went away.

~*~*~

“Who among you would bear the child of Kyoshi?”

The woman who spoke had a painted face and was as tall as a giant. She seemed like a god as she stepped down from the dais and into the small group of women who had crowded around it on their hands and knees, crawling along the wooden floor. The women were young and muscular, clearly powerful but they were still Yin, and as Kyoshi passed by they kissed her feet and buried their faces in her skirt.

Aang sat on the wooden floor as well, away from the women in their collective haze of heat. There were other Yang women in the room too. They watched the proceedings with fascination, and Aang realized that whoever Kyoshi didn’t pick would be theirs.

Kyoshi let the Yins beg and plead, listened to one after another claim that they were the prettiest, the bravest, the smartest, and that if Kyoshi just took pity on them they could give her a child as pretty, as brave, as smart as they were. Aang could smell each one of them as Kyoshi did, could feel her pride swell as she sized each one of them up, knowing any of them were hers for the taking.

She finally chose one, a muscular girl with light hair and darker eyes. “You,” she said, pointing a golden fan at her.

“Master Kyoshi!” The woman leaped into Kyoshi’s arms, clasping Kyoshi around her shoulders with her arms and around Kyoshi’s waist with her legs. They kissed, and to Aang it felt like a drink after being thirsty forever, like a treat for a job well done, like everything good.

Kyoshi lowered her choice to the floor, and the Yangs swarmed around her to pick up the others. Some dove directly for a specific woman, while others waited until a Yin presented herself to them. A fight broke out briefly between two of the Yangs over one girl, but another pushed between them and settled it. To Kyoshi this only barely registered, was part of the overall atmosphere that made her want to consume the girl. Though why should she consider this destruction, Kyoshi thought as she entered into her chosen lover. Wasn’t this the creation of all life?

Aang cried out in pleasure when Kyoshi did, then it all disappeared once again.

~*~*~

The visions kept coming: an Air Nomad woman baring her neck to a trembling, eager male Yang in the courtyard of an upside-down air temple; an Earth Kingdom boy eagerly receiving his first kiss and not knowing whether he should surrender or push the older woman to the ground and claim her; a young Water Tribe woman in a city of metal and bricks biting a black-haired youth on the shoulder until he begged for her clit.

The last vision was in an opulent room decorated with red tapestries and gold statues. Aang knew he must be in the Fire Nation. It was a Yin this time, a young man with hair down to his back and a long nose that offset his kind smile. He was bent nearly double under the Yang. Even though his Yang was smaller than him, he was handsome. He radiated a power that the Yin – and Aang – found so irresistible as to be almost shameful. Aang wanted to give everything ever to this man and somehow suspected that would be the worst thing he could ever do.

“Do you like it?” the Yang asked.

“Yes,” the Yin responded. “Oh yes, of course.”

“Then let me knot in you, Roku. This can’t be enough. You have to want children. You have to have the urge. I can fix it.”

“No, Sozin.”

Sozin’s face reddened at the response. He grabbed Roku’s face with both hands and kissed him fiercely, thrusting into him again and again, stretching him, filling him. It felt so wonderful. Aang could tell Roku wanted to completely let go, let the man knot in him and breed him. And yet, he didn’t. Roku somehow was able to close his eyes and let the sensations roll over him until he came.

This time, though, Aang didn’t find himself somewhere else. The scene melted away but Roku still stood before him. Only this time he was old, his long hair and beard as white as snow.

“How do you do it?” Aang asked. “There’s so much at stake. There’s so much need involved. How do you not hurt others? How do you not get hurt? How can anyone ever balance it all without going insane?”

“Little one,” Roku said, “That’s what love is.”

~*~*~

The cell was full of shadows and the moon was up when Aang awakened. Despite meditating for hours he felt exhausted. His legs ached like he’d been running for miles, and Aang winced as he uncrossed them. As he shifted, his body touched against something wet and viscous. Aang saw the sheets had been drenched in his fluids. Curious, he pressed his fingers into it and brought some up to his nose. It didn’t smell like anything to him, but he still couldn’t imagine flinging it in someone’s face.

“Ew,” he decided, and wiped his fingers off on the sheets again.

Aang took off the tunic and slid into the tub. He tried to process what he had seen, wondered who those people were, but so many of them were already fading. He closed his eyes and splashed some water in his face.

“So, I’m an adult now,” Aang said to himself, but he couldn’t figure out what that meant either.

~*~*~

“Well, you should be proud of yourself,” Monk Gyatso told him later as they were eating breakfast. (They’d had a large spread in front of them. Aang hadn’t realized how hungry he was until later, but when the hunger made itself known, it was ugly.) “Most young people don’t make it through their first heats without waking up in the middle.”

“Thanks,” Aang said, chewing through a large mouthful of rice. “It was kind of difficult. When the visions started coming that made it a little easier, though.”

“Visions?” Monk Gyatso put down his own rice and chopsticks. “What sort of visions?”

Aang could feel his face turn red, but after some prodding, he told Monk Gyatso everything he remembered, trying to explain the grosser parts without going into too much detail. Monk Gyatso listened with his hands folded in front of his face, not saying anything. As Aang talked more and more, he got the impression that whatever he had seen, it wasn’t something normal.

“Thank you for telling me, Aang,” Gyatso said. He stood up with a sigh. “There’s something I need to discuss with the elders. Finish your food. I’ll be back later.”

Aang’s eyes followed Gyatso as he walked away. After a moment, Aang lifted some rice to his mouth, trying to eat over his growing dread.

End Part One.


	2. The Water Tribe

~*~*~

When Katara was a little girl, she left one of her two dolls out in the snow. She found it the next day, but by then it had turned muddy and stiff.

It wasn’t her favorite doll. Its black eyes and black mouth were made of thread; its short hair was made of leather strips. The one she’d remembered to bring inside the igloo – the one she slept with every night – had long, black hair made of yarn and red thread lips. When playing with them together she’d often pretend her favorite was a Yin while the leather-haired doll was a Yang.

Nevertheless, she was upset when she discovered what had happened. She washed the injured doll for an hour and let it dry on a rock in the sun, but the doll had remained stained and turned lumpy from the water.

Gran-gran made her a new doll later, one much like her favorite, with brown threaded hair and a dress with an elaborate purple design. Katara loved it right away, clasped it to her breast as she thanked her grandmother.

“Now you won’t need your ruined doll anymore,” Gran-gran said with a smile. “Why don’t you go get it and we’ll put it on the fire tonight?”

“What? No!” Katara exclaimed, tears already starting to form in her eyes. “You can’t kill it!”

“Katara, nobody’s killing anything. It’s just a toy.”

But that only made Katara cry harder. Gran-gran tried to reason with her, tried to tell her that all toys eventually have to be thrown away, but Katara was insistent. She even offered to give her new doll away to another one of the babies in the village to keep her old one. Gran-gran eventually relented, but every time she saw Katara playing with the three dolls together, she’d shake her head.

“Why no!” Katara said. She was lying on her stomach, kicking her feet and wiggling her favorite doll in front of the other two dolls, speaking for her. “I don’t know which one of you to choose. You’re both just so wonderful and handsome!” Katara put her favorite doll down and picked up the other two. “Guess you’ll just have to race for it.” Katara ran around the camp, the two dolls held out on either side of her, and screamed “Whee!” until she got tired.

“Well, who won the race?” Gran-gran asked.

Katara shrugged as she trudged into the igloo, her three dolls wrapped in her arms. “Pinga and I talked it over. We don’t need to decide yet.”

Years later, Katara still hadn’t decided.

~*~*~

Katara tried not to worry about what she would be when she grew up. Her life had plenty of trouble and responsibilities ever since the men of the tribe left to fight in the war, and the older she grew the more and more she was expected to shoulder. Other than her brother, there weren’t any young men of her age anyway. Coupling with a woman would probably have been understandable given the situation, but most of them already had Yang husbands fighting off in the war. So mating often seemed like a non-issue.

Yet as Katara’s breasts grew and her hips expanded but she never went into heat or developed the ability to smell them in others, it would bother her. Gran-gran reminded her that nature needed to take its course and there wasn’t anything that she could do to change that.

The day after Katara turned thirteen, however, it was hard to heed her grandmother’s advice.

~*~*~

Katara and Sokka had been out on a hunting mission for most of the day when Sokka began to complain about the heat.

“The sun is too bright or something,” Sokka said as he took his gloves off. “I feel like my skin’s boiling.” 

A cold wind whipped across Katara’s face as she trudged behind Sokka, pulling the weapons on a sled behind her.

“You’re crazy,” she said, yanking her hood closer around her face. “It’s freezing. It may be sunny but this wind could be deadly if we stay out past dusk.”

Sokka stopped and turned around, “If it’s not hot, then why am I sweating, Katara?”

He was sweating. Katara could see the beads dripping down from his forehead. She still thought he was nuts.

“I don’t know, but I’m really cold,” Katara snapped. “I feel like my legs are going numb.”

Sokka groaned and dropped his club in the snow. “I can’t stand this. I’m taking my coat off. Can you move the weapons?”

Katara let out an “ugh” as she crouched down to pick up the spears, knives, extra club, bow and arrows on the sled. After Sokka plopped his coat on the sled, Katara put the weapons back.

“I still don’t see why we needed to bring all this stuff. We have more weapons between us then we do hands.”

Katara looked up at Sokka to see him crouching in front of the sled. He took two handfuls of snow from off the ground and began rubbing it on his face.

“Sokka?” Katara pressed her fingers to her forehead, then touched Sokka’s. He really did feel hot. “Sokka, I think you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick! I don’t feel sick. I feel hot.” Sokka got to his feet, pushing his hands against his knees as he stood up. He seemed wobbly as he walked further east.

“I think you feel hot because you’re sick,” Katara grumbled as she pulled the sled after him.

Sokka didn’t answer. Katara watched him closely. Sokka was walking slower than normal, as if every step was difficult. He drank out of his water pouch every ten seconds or so. When it was nearly empty he tilted his head far back to suck the last drop, and then threw it away in frustration.

He started to tear at his shirt. “I can’t stand this!”

“Sokka!” Katara dropped the sled’s rope and ran to his side. “Sokka, you’re scaring me. Let’s go back to the …”

Sokka cried out and clutched at his stomach. Katara heard herself shriek as Sokka fell to his knees.

“Something …,” Sokka groaned and fell forward onto his hands. “Something’s wrong with me.”

Katara tried not to tremble. “Hold on!” She raced back to the sled and tipped it to the side, spilling everything out. She grasped onto the rope and felt her heart pound in her chest as Sokka cried out.

He was crouched on the ground now. As Katara approached, she saw his pants were soaked.

“No.” Sokka held his forehead with both hands, rocked slowly back and forth. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening to me.”

“Did … Did you wet yourself?” Katara asked.

Sokka shook his head. “This is the only time that I wish I did. I wish I really, really did.”

Katara bit her lip. The words “heat” and “Yin” were on the tip of her tongue, but to say them would be cruel. She moved behind him.

“I’ll get you back home. Let me help you onto the sled.” Katara tried to reach underneath his shoulders and drag him to the sled but Sokka flinched and violently pulled away.

“I’m not helpless!” Sokka spat. He crawled to the sled and curled up in a ball, softly moaning to himself.

Katara’s ego felt a little bruised as she got behind the sled. She took a deep breath and heaved, pushing the sled forward by its handles. Sokka was a bit too heavy for it; Katara wished the tribe could have had dogs again. It didn’t help that Sokka wouldn’t keep still. He rocked back and forth, his eyes shut tight. Every time the sled hit a snowdrift or a snag in the ground he moaned or winced. 

Katara tried to calculate in her head how much more time she had before the sun set. She figured they were about an hour away from camp at optimal speed, and this would probably take them an hour and a half given the pace they were going. Katara thought that she could go back for the weapons in time, but she would have to rush. Maybe she could try to use waterbending to push the sled on the way out again, but the last time she tried that she kept skidding and almost busted her head open.

Sokka was breathing so heavily. Katara looked down at him and immediately shuddered. He had his hand inside his pants, was jerking himself off vigorously.

“Sokka!” Katara yelled. He kept doing it. He didn’t even seem to notice she’d said anything. Katara stopped the sled, then shook it as hard as she could.

The trick worked. Sokka flinched at the sudden movement, then sheepishly pulled his hand away. “Sorry,” he whispered.

Katara shuddered again before moving on.

Sokka didn’t stay quiet for long. He was moaning again, louder this time. It seemed like he was in pain. Katara sighed. Should she have really stopped him from doing that?

“Do you want me to try to run?” Katara asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sokka muttered.

Katara tried to think of something, anything, that would be helpful. “Maybe you could try to meditate?”

Sokka laughed bitterly. “Oh, right. Meditate. That’ll be easy. I just have the world’s worst fever and gunk coming out of my butt and any time I try to think about anything my body screams that it wants something big and hard ramming inside of it …”

“Oh, gross!”

“You think it’s gross? I think it’s gross, Katara. But that’s all I want and all I can think about so sorry if I can’t close my eyes and think about the ocean and the sky and pretty, pretty flowers!”

Katara huffed. She probably should have apologized but she’d been pushing the sled for almost a half-hour now and felt tired and cranky. “I was just trying to help you.”

“Can you contact the spirits?” Sokka asked dismissively. “Can you do that with your magic water? Can you ask the spirits to make me a real man instead of no better than a girl?”

Rage flowed through Katara. She could feel the snow turn to water beneath her feet. “I should leave you here, you sexist jerk!” she screamed, feeling rather than seeing the water splash around her.

But when it all came down around them and Katara’s rage settled, she could hear Sokka crying.

There really was nothing more she could do other than press on. Katara pushed the sled off the hard ground and back up into the snow. Eventually, the terrain became a little more flat, and, after a running start, Katara was able to stand at the back of the sled with her feet on each of the runners for the last twenty or so minutes of the journey.

“I’m going to get Gran-gran,” she said as she parked the sled near the wall surrounding the camp.

“What?” Sokka asked. He’d stopped crying a while ago, but his voice was scratchy and weak. “No, I don’t want her to see me like this.”

“She’s a Yin. She hasn’t gone into heat in years, but she’ll know how to help you better than me.”

Sokka covered his face with his arm as Katara ran off.

Gran-gran was kind to him, kinder than Katara thought possible, given how snippy and rude Sokka was to her in return. She told him in a soft but firm voice how to handle the rest of the heat, and gave him a box that she said had something inside it he could use. Sokka shuddered upon taking it. Before entering the Yins’ isolation igloo, Gran-gran tried to explain to him the basics of child-bearing, but he screamed at her to shut up and rushed inside.

“How can you let him talk to you that way?” Katara asked as they pushed the large rock in front of the entrance.

“He’s a terrified boy going through something scary and painful,” her grandmother said. “He’s young enough to know what our traditions expect of him but not old enough to know he doesn’t have to fit them. And he’s wanted to be a warrior for years.”

Katara made a disgusted noise and shook her head. “At least he knows what he is.”

“What’s happening to Sokka is not about you, Katara,” Gran-gran chided. “Your day will come, but for now you need to be generous and understanding.”

Unlike him? Katara wanted to ask, but she kept silent.

Her resentment lingered as she made her way out into the wilderness again, sometimes riding the sled and sometimes pulling it behind her. Her arms were aching and her legs were tired. Once she tried to waterbend but she was too exhausted and frazzled to keep up the proper form and ended up crashing into a snowdrift. It didn’t hurt, but it seemed to burst open the well of jealousy she was trying to cap, and she had to wipe the tears out of her eyes.

~*~*~

Three cycles of the moon passed and Sokka still hadn’t adjusted well. Katara thought he’d always been lazy when it came to chores, but even his attempts at training himself or the tribe’s little boys dried up. He spent a lot of time by himself, only occasionally going outside of camp to fool around with his boomerang. Katara would occasionally rope him into going hunting or fishing with her, but he was so ill-tempered and sullen she wondered why she bothered.

Gran-gran, once again, kept urging Katara to give him time.

~*~*~

Alignak had been the first to see the Northern Water Tribe ship. The little boy had come running into camp, jumping up and down with excitement as he described the boat: a large cutter with many sails bearing the moon and ocean symbol, carrying many men dressed in blue parkas. The tribe was ecstatic at the news. What did they want? Why were they here? Did they have news of the war? Of their husbands? Gran-gran warned them that they couldn’t get excited just yet, that they could be Fire Nation soldiers in disguise, but the excitement didn’t dampen by much.

“We should go and meet them,” Katara said to Sokka after telling him about the ship. “We can investigate the ship together, just in case Gran-gran’s right.”

“I don’t want to,” Sokka said. He hugged his knees as he sat by the fire.

Katara rolled her eyes. “Dad would want you to.”

Sokka gave her a glare that could freeze a lake, but he collected his boomerang and club and they went to meet the ship.

It was smaller than Katara expected, something fit for a long journey but definitely not a war ship. She waved to it and a broad-shouldered man with short-cropped hair saw her and waved back.

“Do you think they’ve come to bring us help?” Katara asked.

Sokka shrugged. “If they are, they certainly took their sweet time getting here.”

Katara smirked. Normally she’d be annoyed at him for being so negative, but it was good to see a glimpse of the old Sokka.

The man who waved at her from the ship, Keruguq, was the first to greet them. Despite their hopes, Keruguq, and the people who came with him, were not soldiers, but naturalists. (They also were not, as Katara had specifically hoped, waterbenders.) Keruguq talked at length about how eager he was to compare the Southern Tribe penguins to the Northern Tribe puffins before even asking their names.

“Hmm,” he said after he bowed in greeting to Sokka. “I’m surprised the soldiers would let a Yin boy be in charge while they were gone.”

“My father is the leader of the Southern Water Tribe,” Sokka said, his back stiff and his arms crossed. “And we need to investigate your ship and make sure you’re not Fire Nation.”

Katara smiled to herself as they walked together up the gangplank.

Their investigation was blissfully peaceful. The siblings found no traces of Fire Nation paraphernalia or any weapons. Even the food on the ship was traditional Water Tribe fare like seaweed and squid. The storage areas were full of scrolls showing diagrams of birds, seals and whales, as well as instruments like hand lenses and small picks.

Sokka seemed fascinated by the naturalists’ tools, touching everything and examining everything closely, albeit not carefully as he at one point let a box of needles slip out of his hand and spill all over the floor. Still, to Katara he looked happier than he had in months.

But the people on the ship were another matter.

There were nine other men, and, from the looks they sometimes gave Sokka, most of them seemed to be Yangs. As Sokka asked them to remove their parkas for inspection, they would look him up and down and smirk or lick their lips.

“The last Yin who asked me that found themselves in my bunk,” said one of them.

“Okauak!” another of them said. “Stop that! He’s a child!”

Okauak snorted. “He certainly doesn’t smell like a child.”

Sokka gripped onto his club. “Give. Me. Your. Parka.”

The Yang laughed until Katara splashed a wave of water up onto the ship and doused him.

There was a young woman of about fifteen or sixteen years old on the ship, as well. She was the last to be inspected, and handed Sokka her parka without complaint. Watching her, Katara was struck by her beauty. Her shoulder-length hair was jet black, and her skin seemed to shine in the sun. The only things about her that weren’t alluring were her hands, which were thick with calluses and blisters, and her scent. She was wearing some sort of perfume that seemed to drench her in a sticky-sweet cloud.

The woman stared directly into Katara’s eyes as Sokka looked through her parka. It unsettled Katara a little bit.

“Hi. I’m Katara,” she said finally.

“Tikanni,” the young woman said, and smiled like a wolf.

With everything inspected, Katara and Sokka led Keruguq back to camp while the rest of the crew unloaded the ship. As Gran-gran greeted Keruguq warmly, Sokka took Katara by the arm and led her further away.

“What is it?” Katara asked.

“They know!” Sokka pressed his palms against either side of his head. “I didn’t want to go. I think my heat’s tomorrow. That’s probably why they could smell me so well. This is awful.”

Katara wasn’t sure what to say. “Maybe you should ask Gran-gran for advice.”

“Are you kidding? With the way she keeps trying to tell me about having kids, she might try to make me mate with one of those creeps.”

“She wouldn’t do that to you, Sokka. You don’t need to mate with anyone you don’t want to.”

Sokka just crossed his arms in response. Katara sighed. She wasn’t sure if her brother was ever going to come to terms with himself and didn’t understand why.

“Look, I think Dad would be proud of what you did today.” Katara laid a hand on Sokka’s shoulder.

Sokka brushed it off. “You told me to do it.”

Katara groaned in frustration. Would nothing make him happy?

“No, no. I’m glad. Really,” Sokka reached out his arms and enveloped Katara in a hug. “Thank you.”

Katara tried to say something back, but instead her mouth dropped open. She felt something stir in her stomach. Did she imagine what just happened? Trying to be subtle, she rested her head on chin on Sokka’s shoulder, and took a whiff.

Sokka pushed her away suddenly. “Did you just smell me?”

“Um …” Katara opened her mouth. “Well …”

“You did! You did! You can smell me, can’t you?”

“I …” Katara gulped. Her heart was racing. There was a part of her that wanted to scream with joy. “Well, I think so.”

“You’re kidding! My sister is a Yang and not …?” Sokka growled in rage, unable to finish the sentence. “I’m going into the igloo early. Don’t follow me! Don’t even talk to me!”

Katara tried to call after him, but it wasn’t any use. For a few minutes, Katara felt horribly, horribly guilty.

And yet, the joy that was building in her chest wouldn’t be denied. She was trembling; she was so excited. Katara began to jump up and down. Snow flew around her in her excitement, and she made it whirl.

She was a Yang. She was a Yang. She knew. She finally, finally knew.

~*~*~

“There’s something strange about this,” Gran-gran said after Katara told her the news.

“Strange how?” Katara asked. They were cooking food for the visitors together in the main clearing of the camp, with Katara cutting strips of seal meat and herbs as her grandmother cooked them and tended the fire. The villagers and the naturalists’ talking filled the camp, creating a pleasant sound like the squalling of sea-birds on a sunny day.

“Your grandfather was able to smell Yins upon meeting them,” Gran-gran said. “You shouldn’t have needed to be so up close to Sokka to catch his scent.”

Katara shrugged and she sliced another root in half. “You said yourself that everyone matures differently. Maybe my scent just hasn’t fully kicked in yet.”

“Are you sure you didn’t trick yourself into believing you smelled something?”

Katara laughed. “C’mon. Why would I want to smell my own brother that way?”

“I suppose,” Gran-gran said. She turned over a piece of seal meat, staring at it as the red juices bubbled on the pan.

“Gran-gran, why can’t you just be happy for me?”

Her grandmother sighed. “You’ve just been so invested in this. I feel like fate has already put you at a disadvantage, being a waterbender without a master. I know it breaks your heart that you can’t train, and I don’t want to see your heart broken again.”

“But everything’s fine,” Katara said. “I know what happened, Gran-gran. I do. And it’s wonderful. I feel like I know who I am.”

“There’s more to a person than being Yin or Yang. Or even a waterbender,” Gran-gran said.

“Well, yeah, but, it’s still important, right?” Katara said, handing her grandmother the cut roots. “It’s where you start.”

Gran-gran shook her head and continued to cook.

~*~*~

Katara still couldn’t help but be excited. As she walked around the camp distributing the food to the guests, she felt a persistent flutter in her heart. Yet what her grandmother said did weigh on her. As she leaned in to give the food to one of the naturalists, she realized that she couldn’t smell much of anything off of them.

Well, she told herself, she had been waiting for puberty for years, she could wait a little longer for it to kick in all the way, couldn’t she?

Katara’s eyes scanned the naturalists as they sat around the fire and ate. Most of them were sitting in pairs with a female Southern Water Tribe member. The women were all bonded, if not married, but they enjoyed the company of being among Yang men again. They chatted and flirted pleasantly.

Katara noticed a naturalist sitting by himself. She made him a bowl of food and walked over to him. As she bent down and he leaned forward to thank her, Katara got a whiff of his Yin scent.

Yes, Katara thought, she was right. She could smell it. She hadn’t imagined it. And he smelled … good. He was much older than her, but he was attractive, with rich brown eyes and a beard along the ridges of his chin. Katara felt an urge to run her fingers through his long hair.

She realized the Yin was smiling back at her. Immediately, her nerve faltered. What was she supposed to do? She wasn’t looking for a mate, but Yangs were supposed to flirt with Yins, weren’t they?

Katara smiled and played with her braid. I’m pretty, right? She thought, as if he could somehow read her mind. I’m strong. I carried my brother through the snow. Well, pushed, but it was for a long time. I could totally make good children, don’t you think?

“What’s your name?” the Yin asked.

“I’m a waterbender,” Katara said. Then she mentally kicked herself. “Katara. My name is Katara.”

The Yin laughed. “I’m Adlartok. I can’t bend. Is it fun?”

Katara felt her mouth go dry. She felt like she should do something. She reached forward hesitantly and stroked his hair. “This, uh, this is nice.”

Adlartok just smiled magnanimously. “You haven’t even let me eat yet.”

Katara blushed. “S-Sorry. I … I can go.”

“No, no.” Adlartok held out the bowl to her.

Katara understood. She reached into the bowl and took out a bit of seal meat, which she raised to Adlartok’s mouth. He closed his eyes as he bit into it, letting his lips brush against the tips of her fingers. A thrill ran through Katara. She traced her fingertips along his lips, wanted to stick them in his mouth …

“Mmmm,” he said. “That’s very good, Katara.”

“Would you like another?” Katara reached into the bowl.

“Of course.” Adlartok closed his eyes and opened his mouth. Katara giggled as she tossed the meat inside.

“Adlartok!”

The gruff voice came from behind Katara. She whirled around. Someone very tall with a long face and nearly black hair and eyes was walking toward her. Katara realized he was the man from the ship, the one who had called out the guy who harassed Sokka. She suddenly figured out what she’d done and stepped away from Adlartok.

If he was in trouble, Adlartok showed no signs of being concerned. “Mauja, have you met Katara? She can waterbend.”

“Yes, I saw on the ship.” Mauja frowned at her as he laid a firm hand on Adlartok’s shoulder. “Know what you’re doing before you play games, little girl.”

“Mauja,” Adlartok reached out and pet his wrist. “Don’t be that way. You were young, once, too.”

“I say it because I remember what I was like when I was young. Come on.” Mauja grasped under Adlartok’s armpit, then pulled him to his feet and off to the other end of the camp.

Katara returned to her chores feeling like a wolf with its tail between its legs. She tried to tell herself she couldn’t have known Adlartok had a mate, especially since he liked the attention. But she felt embarrassed, especially since she hadn’t thought herself an impressive Yang in that exchange.

The last bowl of food she handed out was to Okauak, who was sitting with Miki, one of the women from the Southern tribe, and her young daughter. Katara had planned to just thrust the food in his hands quickly and be off, but she caught a bit of their conversation. 

“Well, I’m a man of science, of course I can admit that not all Yang are men and not all women are Yin, but they should be. That’s the only type of mating that should be encouraged. Other cultures are too lenient about this. The Fire Nation has become too aggressive because it reveres Yang in men and women. And the Air Nomads with their reverence of the Yin? Feh. If you ask me, it was their own fault they were slaughtered. That’s why the earth is really out of balance, too many people messing with the natural order of things. Ah,” Okauak said as he noticed Katara. “It’s about time.” He held out his hand for the bowl of food.

With both of her eyes locked onto his, Katara spilled it to the ground. “Whoops,” she said coldly and walked away. She could hear Miki call after her, but she didn’t care.

Katara went to one of the tents to eat by herself, still fuming. What sort of nonsense was that? Who in their right mind would consider what happened to the Air Nomads anything but a tragedy? Who would blame male Yins and female Yangs for it? She wondered if Okauak would ever blame the losses their tribe had suffered – the death of her mother – on her and her brother. And he’d made a pass at her brother, too! Who did these people think they were?

Katara let these thoughts circle around and around in her head until her anger was finally doused. She felt tired afterward, but not tired enough yet to sleep. She crawled out of the tent. By this time many of the tribe’s women and the naturalists had headed off to sleep. She figured she’d take a walk around the perimeter until she felt tired enough herself.

The young woman from the ship – Tikanni, that was her name – had surprised her. She stood with her back against the camp’s outer wall like she was waiting for something. As she turned to Katara, her mouth stretched open to show her gleaming white teeth.

“Oh, hi,” Katara said, wondering why she felt her stomach fluttering. “I guess you can’t sleep either?”

“No. I wondered where you went,” Tikanni said. She walked up to Katara, hand on her hip. “You do a lot of work around the camp, huh?”

Katara blinked. “Um, yeah. Sewing. Cooking. Stuff like that.”

“Me too,” Tikanni held up her rough hands. “I’m the ship’s cook. That’s why my hands look like this. They’re pretty ugly, huh?”

They were, but Katara didn’t want to say that. Tikanni stepped closer and rubbed one of her hands against Katara’s cheek. The calluses felt abrasive against her skin in a way that made the fluttering in her stomach even worse. Tikanni leaned forward and whispered in Katara’s ear.

“But some say there can be something comforting in roughness. What do you think?”

Katara gulped. She tried to blabber something about it feeling good but lost her voice as Tikanni buried her face in Katara’s neck. Her perfume stung Katara’s nostrils but there was something about Tikanni that excited Katara in spite of herself.

“You smell so … interesting,” Tikanni said. “I like it. It does something to me.”

Katara took Tikanni’s hands in her own. Lust and curiosity whirled in her head as she pressed her lips against Tikanni’s. The other girl kissed her back heartily, scraping her teeth against Katara’s tongue in a way that made the space between Katara’s legs pound.

“Do … Do you want to come to my tent?” Katara asked.

Immediately after she asked that Katara wondered why, kept wondering even while Tikanni was following her back. It was like one of the first times she’d tried to waterbend. She’d stood at the edge of an icy cliff and tried to pick up as much water as she could with her bending, lifting more and more until she began to sweat and almost collapsed, just to see how far she could take it. How far was she willing to go?

Tikanni reached for her as soon as they sat down together on Katara’s sleeping bag, their parkas thrown off to the side of the tent. Katara decided she really liked kissing, liked the sensation of another wet tongue against her own, liked tasting another person’s lips. As they kept kissing Tikanni’s hands roved over her curves. Her fingers brushed against Katara’s breasts and Katara pushed them down. When she did it again, Katara realized she probably wasn’t being a good Yang, should probably be doing more to please her Yin. Katara grabbed a clump of Tikanni’s hair and pulled back hard, forcing the girl into a backbend. Katara grasped onto Tikanni’s back tightly as she kissed her.

When the kiss was over, Tikanni laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh of joy; it seemed to be drenched in something derisive and mean.

In quick succession, Katara felt the push and her head knocking back against the ground with a hard crack. Tikanni’s leathery hand was on her throat, squeezing. Katara felt her blood run cold. This was wrong. This was very wrong.

“What?” Katara wheezed, feeling her pulse strain against Tikanni’s hands. “What are you doing?”

Tikanni laughed. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it rough. I can practically taste the fight in you.”

No, this wasn’t right at all. A Yin would never treat her this way, was never allowed to treat a Yang this way. “I think there’s been some mistake,” Katara said.

“Oh?” Tikanni grinned in a way that made Katara’s heart stop, then she kissed Katara again. Despite how scared and confused she felt, Katara felt herself kissing back. There was something in this roughness that called to her, made her want to wrap her legs around Tikanni’s waist and let go.

“You have such smooth skin,” Tikanni purred. “Such beautiful skin. Such pretty hair. “ Tikanni yanked off her pants.

“Wait!” Katara yelled. “I’m not ready!” She gasped as Tikanni ripped open her robe.

“You will be soon,” Tikanni said, a disturbing leer in her voice. She reached beneath the skirt of Katara’s robes and touched her there. Katara whimpered in pleasure and fury as Tikanni stroked against her vagina, pushed inside her in the places that were soft and wet. Then Tikanni moved her hand up higher.

It was like Tikanni had been frozen. Just as quickly as she’d knocked Katara to the ground, Tikanni pulled her hand away, looked at her with revulsion. “What are you?”

Katara pushed herself so she was sitting up. She was breathing heavily, still stunned by everything that had happened. Tikanni was staring at her like she was some sort of disgusting worm. Katara looked down at herself. Her robe was ripped open; her pants had been pulled down to reveal the lower half of her body, her wet vagina and her erect clitoris. Only it wasn’t very long at all, not the way it should have been.

The truth came upon Katara in an instant: the puberty that never arrived, the sense of smell that didn’t work right, the constant confusion all her life over what she wanted and what she really was.

“Pervert,” Tikanni sneered. “You tricked me!”

Katara wasn’t sure what was happening. She was shocked, crushed, humiliated, angry, upset and yet she felt as calm as the surface of a lake as she pulled her robe closed, as she pulled up her pants.

“I didn’t trick you,” Katara said as she stood up. “I didn’t know.”

Tikanni made a disgusted noise. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I only learned how to smell Yins today,” Katara said, her voice even but firm. “I thought I was a Yang.”

“You? A Yang?” Tikanni laughed. “Did you even look at yourself? You think you’d be able to please a Yin with that pathetic little clit you have? That thing’s like three inches, you freak.”

Tikanni’s words were like a huge rock thrown on her calm, and Katara’s anger rippled out in waves.

“You were the one who came onto me!” Katara countered. “You were the one who said I was pretty. And that three inch thing changed your mind? That’s what changed me from pretty to pervert in your eyes? Well, fine! Call me a pervert. If being a Yang means being a shallow jerk like you, I’m glad I’m not a Yang!”

“You can’t shame me, pervert,” Tikanni said as she collected her parka. “I’m a ruler. You’ll never be anything.”

Katara stood as stiff and cold as ice as Tikanni left the tent. She talked herself into and out of running after Tikanni and freezing her three times before she moved to the sleeping bag. Katara curled up in a ball for a few minutes, not feeling anything. She wanted to fall asleep, then she wanted to cry. Katara uncurled herself and reached into her pants. She rubbed on her clitoris, feeling it harden and grow between her fingers.

“Come on,” Katara begged. “Get bigger. Get bigger.”

Katara yanked on it until it ached, but it still didn’t grow much larger. She thought of stories she had heard of Yins eager to be stuffed with something huge and unyielding, to be filled with come again and again. When Katara came, leaving her hand sticky but by no means drenched, she felt empty. Katara tried again, forcing two fingers, then three into her vagina. She tried for a fourth but it felt too painful, and she stopped without coming again.

Before Katara closed her eyes, she thought vaguely of Adlartok, of him licking her fingers, and tried to feel something resembling hope.

~*~*~

When Katara woke up the next morning, groggy and weak, she headed straight for the main igloo. Gran-gran was elsewhere but Sokka sat inside. He gnawed greedily on a seal rib as she walked toward the back of the igloo. He kept his attention on it, not even looking at her.

“Oh, good! You’re awake,” Sokka said through a mouthful of food. “Do we have any more of this? I know we had more people but I’m starving after yesterday and … Katara, what’s wrong?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Katara said, picking up an old sack and throwing it over shoulder. “I’m not a Yang. You should be happy.”

“What?” Sokka swallowed another bite of food, gulping it down loudly. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? Just go back to eating!”

Katara ran out of the igloo, out of the camp and out into the snow, not stopping until her home was only barely visible. She sat down in the snow and opened the bag, letting her dolls fall out. Pinga was on the top of the pile. Katara clutched the doll to her chest, kissed its cheek and forehead.

Katara then picked up the other dolls, the lumpy, leathery one and the intricate, beautiful one. She forced them to sit in the snow, then sat Pinga in front them.

“Guess what? I don’t have to decide anymore. You can both marry me,” Katara first waved Pinga in front of the leathery doll, “You can be my strong protector and go hunting with me.” She then moved Pinga to the pretty doll. “And you can have my babies.”

It was stupid. She was thirteen years old. She was playing with dolls. She would never be able to please a Yin. If a Yang ever wanted to mate with her it would because he or she had a fetish or didn’t want a child. The tears came before she could tell herself to stop them. She hugged Pinga again and bawled.

The sound of snow crunching beneath boots was what made her stop. She clutched Pinga closer to her. “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

“No. I think I get it, actually. You want to feel like a kid again, right?”

Katara nodded. Sokka sat next to her. He picked up the leather doll and ran his fingers through her hair, studying her closely. “You know, I always felt affection for Lumpy Leather Doll. Sure, she’s hideous and kind of smells like mold, but she’s got such a charming personality, huh?”

Sokka smiled and bounced the doll on Katara’s lap, but Katara was too upset to be cheered by it. He put the doll down.

“Would it help at all if I told you that I’m really, really jealous?” Sokka asked. “At least you’re half-Yang. I would kill to be even that.”

“But I’m not a Yang,” Katara said. “You may not like what you are, but you know what you are. What I am doesn’t even have a name. I’m nothing.”

“You’re not nothing. You’re what’s in between. You’re …” Sokka grinned and snapped his fingers. “You’re the squiggly!”

Katara’s right eyebrow twitched as she glared at him.

Sokka sighed with a dramatic shrug of his shoulders. “Look, I’m serious. You say I know what I am. I feel like I get told what to be. But you don’t have that. You can do anything, Katara.”

“Anything but be a good mate,” Katara said. She was holding Pinga in both her hands in front of her, squeezing her doll hard. “I’m just this pervert who’ll never be good at getting pregnant or getting anyone pregnant.”

“But you can do both! So who cares if you’re not the best?” Sokka asked. “It’s like that Avatar you always talk about. He can use all the magic elements, right? But that doesn’t mean he has to be the best at using every single one! It’s the fact that he can use them all that makes him special.”

Katara groaned and threw her doll on the ground. “Being an in-between person isn’t like being the Avatar! Nobody thinks of it that way.”

Sokka shrugged again. “Well, maybe they should.”

Katara laid her head in her hands. Sokka shuffled closer to her. After a moment’s hesitation, Katara leaned into him and they hugged.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t patient with you,” Katara said, squeezing him a little tighter.

“It’s okay. You got me home. I never thanked you for that.”

Katara let out a breath and sat up. She started to collect the dolls and put them away in her bag. “I know you’re trying to help. I’m sorry. What happened last night really shook me up.”

Sokka blinked. “What happened last night?”

Katara told him everything. As Sokka listened, he got more and more angry. When she got to the part with Tikanni, he stood up and pulled out his club.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Sokka said.

“No,” Katara jumped to her feet. “Sokka, it’s fine. You don’t need to confront her. I’ve said everything I needed to say to her.”

“Well, I haven’t,” Sokka said. He marched back toward the camp.

Katara followed him, her bag slung on her back. Sokka powered through the camp, his eyes fierce as he peered into the naturalists’ tents, moving on to the next one when he didn’t see Tikanni inside. At one point, he reached Mauja and Adlartok’s tent. Adlartok called “Good morning!” after Katara, but they kept moving.

When they found her, she had only just awoken, was sitting up in her sleeping bag as they barged into the tent.

“You!” Sokka thrust his club at her. “You owe my sister an apology.”

Tikanni rubbed her eyes and sniffed the air. She laughed.

“Oh, it’s the little Yin warrior,” Tikanni said. She yawned as she got out of her sleeping bag. “I didn’t see you yesterday. Do you have a mate or did you have to stick that club back there?”

Sokka gripped the club tighter. “I told you to apologize!”

“Or what?” Tikanni stood up and stretched. “You really think you can threaten me? I could subdue you in two minutes and make you like it.”

“No, you couldn’t!” Sokka’s face was red.

“Yes, I could. Anyway, I don’t owe any apologies to perverts,” Tikanni flipped her hair and sat down. “If you’re not interested in mating with me, get out of my tent.”

Sokka growled. “You may be pretty and you may smell really, really nice, but you’re still nasty and mean and you need to say that you’re sorry.”

“Wait …” Katara stepped closer to Tikanni and sniffed her. “You do smell nice. Last night you were wearing that horrible perfume.”

“Oh!” Sokka lowered the club. “You mean that perfume from the ship? That was her? That was awful! It made my eyes sting, it was so bad.”

Tikanni’s face twisted into a scowl. She got up and lunged for Sokka, but Katara bent up the snow beneath her feet, knocking her back on the ground.

“It’s like that awful Okauak said. Your tribe believes men should be Yang and women should be Yin,” Katara shook her head and scowled at Tikanni. “To think you accused me of tricking you! You’ve been tricking your tribe all along!”

“She’s hiding her scent?” Sokka asked.

Katara nodded. “I bet she just stays in her room and locks the door once a month and they never even know, do they?”

Sokka turned away and headed outside.

Tikanni’s scowl melted from her face, turned into one of horror. “What are you saying to me? You wouldn’t …”

“Oh really?” Sokka pulled open the door of the tent. “You threatened me and insulted my sister. Give me a good reason not to.”

“No!” Tikanni crawled forward and outstretched her hand. “No, please!”

But Sokka was already out of the tent. Katara went after him, although she looked back at Tikanni, and thought the Yang woman looked so desperate.

When Sokka reached the center of the camp, he took one of the pots lying around from last night and beat against it with his club. “Everyone! Everyone listen to me! I have something to say. I know something everybody should know about one of our guests.”

The tribe members and the naturalists came out of their tents, some of them curious and others frustrated. Katara saw Gran-gran in the crowd, saw the tribe’s women asking her what was happening and Gran-gran shaking her head. Keruguq walked forward out of the circle that had formed around Sokka and Katara.

“What’s all this about?” he asked.

Tikanni emerged from her tent, her parka wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket. Katara saw Adlartok and Mauja near her. Mauja had his arm around Adlartok’s shoulders as he stared at Tikanni, suspicion in his dark eyes.

“It’s about your ship’s cook,” Sokka said. “She insulted and hurt my sister. Actually, she did more than that.”

The whispers coming from their tribe’s members were louder now. Katara felt for a moment very exposed and vulnerable, but also vindicated and righteous. This would teach that horrible Yang to hurt her. This would teach her how it felt to be humiliated over what she was.

Then she saw Adlartok.

Adlartok was staring directly at her, his hands folded at his chin as if pleading. He shook his head, whispered, “No.”

Guilt hit Katara like an icy wave. She placed her hand on Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka followed her gaze. He was silent for a minute, took a deep breath, then looked back at Keruguq.

“Tikanni insulted my sister’s cooking,” Sokka said. He thrust his finger against Keruguq’s chest. “My sister and my Gran-gran worked all day to feed you, opened up our tribe to you, and she just took the food and threw it in her face.”

Adlartok visibly sighed in relief. Mauja hugged him to his side tightly for a moment, then just as suddenly let him go.

“Really?” Keruguq’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I never saw this. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Katara said. “It was when most of you had gone to sleep.”

“She’s insulted our hospitality. You’ve all insulted our hospitality,” Sokka said. “We can’t allow this. The Fire Nation raids have taken too much from us. We can’t give what little we have away to people who don’t treat us with respect.”

Other members of the tribe nodded or murmured their assent. Some of them hugged their children close to them. Gran-gran looked at Katara and Sokka with suspicion. Katara could tell her grandmother knew she wasn’t hearing the whole story, but she also wasn’t going to stop them.

“Keruguq,” Sokka said, “You have to take your people back to the North Pole.”

“What? But … surely this can be worked out! We came all this way! Think of all we could discover.”

“We’re at war. We don’t have time to play scientist, and we don’t have time to coddle the people who do. You need to go.”

“But –!”

“Did you hear my grandson?” Gran-gran said. “That was my cooking, too. Begone, all of you!”

It took a few hours, but the naturalists were packed that day and ready to leave. Some of them seemed crushed; others – like Okauak – gave them dirty looks as they were sent away. Tikanni walked back on the ship by herself, her head hung low so that her black hair covered her face. Despite everything, Katara hoped the other members of the ship wouldn’t take their disappointment out on her.

Mauja and Adlartok were the last to go. Before they boarded Adlartok stopped at Sokka’s side and whispered something in his ear. He went over to her, too. Katara smelled a perfume on him as he kissed her on the cheek and pet her head.

“Isn’t that guy kind of … older?” Sokka asked as he walked off with Mauja.

“He’s spoken for. Anyway, he’s gone. They’re all gone,” Katara said. She clasped her hands in front of her as the ship pulled up its gangplank. “What did he say to you?”

“He said, ‘Thank you, brother.’”

Katara reached for Sokka’s hand, and together they watched the ship sail away.

End Part Two.


	3. The Earth Kingdom

~*~*~

From a very young age, Toph Beifong learned to hate the smell of perfume.

Flowers were nice enough. She didn’t have the patience for planting them (and arrangement was, of course, completely out of the question), but when she would wander the grounds of the Beifong estate on her own sometimes she liked to bend down on her hands and knees and smell them, finding the sweet fragrance a pleasant complement to the earth’s cool and moist soil.

In perfume, the comforting smell of the earth – the smell she associated with strength and powerful badgermoles – was gone. In its place was the medicinal sting of ethanol, transforming the sweetness into something unnatural and alien. Whenever her mother and father would leave the estate, they would douse themselves in perfume. It would sting her nose as they hugged her goodbye.

It wasn’t that she was sad that they left her. She usually found it nice to be alone (or as alone as you could be with a fleet of guards ready to rush to her side at any moment). But it reminded her that she would not be allowed to join them.

~*~*~

Before Master Yu and his useless lessons, the only person outside the family who knew of Toph’s existence was Cuifen, a tutor her parents had hired. Being unable to read put a damper on most formal education, but Cuifen schooled her in the basics of history, a little bit of math, and lots of etiquette.

Toph mostly found it boring. History was sometimes fun but math seemed like glorified counting and etiquette made her want to break things. In fact, a few plates did get smashed after the third or fourth lesson in table manners.

But despite her animosity toward lessons in how to properly bow or pour tea, Toph didn’t mind Cuifen so much. Sometimes when Toph was really frustrated with a boring lesson, Cuifen would forego teaching to talk about the Earth Rumble VI earthbending tournaments, which she attended every week.

“The storylines have been really great lately,” Cuifen gushed one day, a few months after Toph had turned eleven. “Much better than that stupid one where The Gopher fell in love with one of the ring-cleaning badger moles. Anyway, the Boulder and the Big, Bad Hippo have been continuing their ongoing feud, and it’s amped up again now that the Hippo was apparently caught kissing The Boulder’s Yin. They’re going on about how he might have mated with her and I don’t really care one way or the other but the fights have been awesome! At one point the announcer had to get involved, and …”

“What’s a Yin?” Toph asked.

Cuifen said nothing for a minute. Toph could hear her rubbing her hands together, something she did often when she was nervous.

“I think you’re a little too young to ask that question, huh?”

Toph frowned. “What? A few minutes ago I was old enough that you thought you could tell me!”

“We need to get back to etiquette,” Cuifen said, her footfall louder than normal as she grabbed Toph’s wrist and pulled her into the dining room.

Toph spent the rest of the day and the next morning mired in pouty frustration. She didn’t even care that much about getting an answer to the question, but the idea of something else closed off to her drove her crazy. It was like her whole life was a series of trying to open doors only to find they’d been sealed with metal.

And yet, when Cuifen walked into her room the next day, when Toph got a whiff of Cuifen’s smell, Toph immediately felt her anger melt away. It was crazy, but despite how sore she’d been in that moment Toph was so excited to be with her.

“It’s nice to see you smile,” Cuifen said as she sat down on the floor next to Toph, the pages of her book fluttering as she opened it.

Toph tried to listen to what Cuifen was reading, but it was difficult. Cuifen’s smell kept distracting her. Toph liked it so much, wanted to bury her nose in Cuifen’s hair. It was stupid, but the thought made her blush.

Then Cuifen made a joke. It wasn’t that funny, but Toph laughed heartily and took the opportunity to punch Cuifen in the arm.

“Ow! Toph! That’s not nice!” Cuifen scolded.

Normally Toph would have been mad about the verbal lashing, but for some reason Cuifen’s anger just made her snicker. When Cuifen started reading again, Toph poked her hard in the ribs. Heat seemed to radiate off Cuifen’s body.

“What is with you today?”

Toph didn’t know, but she laughed in response. Hearing Cuifen get riled up was as fun as smelling her. And Cuifen did smell really, really good. Toph scooted herself closer to Cuifen. Cuifen groaned in frustration and pulled away, and a wicked feeling bubbled in Toph’s chest. Without thinking, Toph pounced on Cuifen, wrapping her arms around Cuifen’s neck and kissing her on the cheeks again and again.

Cuifen pushed back against Toph, hard. Pain rocketed through her upper back, but Toph recovered quickly, hitting her feet against the floor to sense where Cuifen was. She was at the door, fumbling with the lock.

“I thought I had another day,” Cuifen muttered fearfully to herself.

She tried to close the door but Toph sprung for it, squeezed herself between the door and the frame. Toph flailed her arm wildly in an attempt to grab onto Cuifen. Her teacher pushed her back again, and Toph could hear the door slam shut and the outside lock turn shut as she hit the ground.

Toph snarled. It had all been fun before but the rejection made her angry. Toph felt like something had been stolen from her. “Get back here!” Toph pounded on the door. “Let me out! Let me out!”

She slammed against the door with her fists, then her shoulders. Then, mid-way through scratching at the wood, realization hit her like a rock to the face.

“What am I doing?” Toph pulled away from the door, suddenly aware of the shavings beneath her fingers, the sweat making the spots near her headband and neck sticky, the strange and almost painful feeling between her legs. She sat down on the floor hard. The more Toph realized what had happened the more disoriented she felt. She kept tapping her feet onto the floor in an attempt to get her bearings.

Then Toph heard Cuifen and her father talking. It sounded like little more than whispers at first. Toph crawled over to the wall, pressed her ear against it.

“… My daughter? A Yang?” Her father’s voice sounded far away, but furious. “You’re mad! You’re almost in heat and it’s made you hysterical.”

“You … you can’t really think she’s a Yin, can you?” Cuifen responded.

They were silent for a moment. Toph wished she could get out of her room, vaguely thought of ripping up bits of the floor to knock down the wall. Then her father started to speak again.

“I have borne much as the father of a blind child, but I will not bear an insult such as yours. The very idea that my daughter attacked you! Ridiculous! You’re no longer welcome in this house. Dong. Bao,” he said, referring to two of their servants, “escort her out.”

Toph’s mouth dropped open. “No!”

She could hear the heavy strides of Dong and Bao, the lighter step of Cuifen. They were taking her away. Toph pounded on the door and screamed, “No! Dad! Mom! No!”

But they were gone before her mother came to her room.

“I did attack Cuifen,” Toph said as she hugged her mother. She reeked of perfume but Toph was so grateful to be listened to she didn’t care at that moment. “She wasn’t lying. I didn’t want to hurt her. I just … I just wanted to …” Toph faltered. The truth was she didn’t know what she wanted. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t send her away.”

Her mother gave her a pat on the back. “Oh, Toph. It’s all right. You don’t have to make up lies. We’ll get a new tutor.”

“But I’m not lying, Mom!”

Her mother just sighed and ran her fingers through Toph’s hair. “It’s natural to want to defend her, but this is for your own safety.”

Toph stamped her feet and groaned. “You never listen to me!”

“Enough!” her mother pulled her hand away. “Lunch will be ready soon. I’ll get Bao to wash your face for you when she comes back.”

Toph lowered her head. She curled and uncurled her hands into fists as her mother walked away.

~*~*~

Without lessons, Toph had a lot of time to think, and even more time to get into trouble.

When she thought, she thought about how she felt in those moments before she pounced. She thought about how much she had wanted to grab onto Cuifen and kiss her. Was that what being in love was like? Toph’s face would scrunch in distaste whenever she thought of it. Cuifen was nice and all, but loving her? Yecch. Besides, weren’t boys supposed to marry girls?

But Toph thought much less of the idea of her and Cuifen having babies and much more about Cuifen’s smell. It was natural, unhidden by perfume. It pure was like the earth, and she believed that bending Cuifen to her will would make her feel just as strong.

When she got in trouble, she was in her room. The books that Cuifen used to teach Toph had been lying on the floor. Toph was able to see them with her feet and never tripped over them, and she usually didn’t care at all about mess (sometimes the odd item strewn about the room served as a helpful landmark). However, sensing them often reminded her of what had happened, so Toph decided to stash them somewhere they wouldn’t be as noticeable.

But when she picked them up, when they were closer to her nose, Toph could smell the barest hint of Cuifen on them. Her breath hitched in her throat. It was the first hint Toph had ever gotten of that warmth, that hunger, since Cuifen been gone. Toph brought the book up to her nose and breathed it in deeply.

Toph had to sit back on her bed. Yes, this was how it had felt, that surging strength mixed with a mad need. She could feel her skin warm, a tingling underneath her skirt.

She moaned and lay back on the bed. She imagined what it would be like to have Cuifen lying beneath her. Toph would be standing up, would move one of her feet over Cuifen’s face. She’d dip her toes into her mouth, then move her heel to Cuifen’s throat. After enjoying Cuifen’s pulse against her foot, Toph would press down until Cuifen cried.

The changes to her body knocked Toph out of her fantasy. The tingling between her legs had become painful. Something was swelling. Toph bundled up her skirts near her waist and touched her vagina, her heart pounding as she realized what had happened. The little bit of flesh between her folds had become huge. It was long, cylindrical. As her hand moved along the length of it, she gasped. She thought about calling for her mother.

And yet as she felt along the growing flesh, trying to get a sense of what was happening to her, pleasure rumbled through her body. Eventually the sensations overtook her fear. She basked in them, and they made her feel strong. 

Then the flesh between her hands trembled. Some sort of liquid was shooting out of it. She shrieked. Oh no, what was happening? She was ready to scream, but the pleasure rose again within her. She dug her heels into the bed, kept touching herself as she felt her body let go again and again and again.

After an hour, the sensations were gone as quickly as they had come. A part of it felt wonderful, made her want to lie back on the bed and fall asleep, but the whole experience had rocked her in a bad way.

One thing gave her relief. The swelling between her legs was quickly going down. After a minute, her vagina seemed to be completely normal, if a little sore. Yet that liquid was still there, had left a large part of the bedsheets sticky and gross. Toph tried to wipe her feet on the clean part of the sheets.

Then Toph heard Bao’s steps outside the door, coming closer and closer. Toph scrambled to hide what had happened, but the servant opened the door as Toph pushed down her skirt.

Toph gulped. She sat still as stone, her cheeks slowly turning red, waiting for Bao to say something.

At last, Bao came closer. Like all the servants lately, she was wearing a thick perfume. “Miss Toph, will you get out of bed, please?” she said.

Toph stepped off the bed, her face still hot as she heard the rustling of sheets as Bao removed them.

“I forgot these needed to be cleaned,” Bao lied, and stepped toward the door.

“Wait!” Toph rushed to Bao’s side, wrapped her hands around Bao’s forearm. “Please, Bao. What just happened? Tell me what I am.”

Bao pulled her arm away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The sheets are dirty.” Then she was out of the room, slammed the door behind her before Toph could respond.

Toph growled and kicked the ground, scattering pieces of the stone flooring before she sat down hard. Bao hadn’t just lied; she’d been afraid. And Toph knew it was her father who Bao was scared of. 

Toph pulled off her dress and prepared to change her clothes. She couldn’t stay in this house any longer.

~*~*~

It wasn’t that Toph had planned to run away forever when she launched herself over the gates of the Beifong estate. It was more that she needed to feel the dirt under her feet, to feel free from the web of secrets and lies, if only for a little while.

Why she set out not for the caves and the badgermoles but for the streets of Gaoling was more difficult to explain. Toph had been out among the town’s streets before, knew how to deflect if anyone asked where her parents were or hide if they got too curious about her. She taught herself how to beat gamblers at their own game and lie into getting a free treat from the food stands. Yet money and egg custard had no allure for her today.

As she moved among the townspeople – the shopkeepers who smelled of wood shavings and flour, the women who smelled of powder and paint, the young earthbending students who smelled of sand and sweat – Toph realized she had changed, somehow. Her sense of smell had always been acute, but now beneath all those familiar scents she found others coming off people. Many wore perfume similar to her parents, but those who didn’t – usually those who seemed big and burly from her the vibrations she felt in her feet – sometimes gave off a scent that seemed to be issuing a challenge to her, a scent that told her to either fight or stay away. And others …

He couldn’t have been older than fifteen from the sound of his voice as he apologized to a man who passed him by. Toph sensed him sitting against the side of a wall. She could smell the pork and cabbage dumplings he was eating, hear him sucking his fingers.

Toph strode toward him, took in more of him. He smelled like something she wanted to bite into, and she smiled.

“Hi … Can I help you?” the young man asked.

“Yeah,” Toph said. She was working more on instinct, need and bravado than any sense as she gripped the shoulders of his shirt, pulled him to his feet and slammed him against the wall. He was slender, and that made it easy. “That is, if you’re tough enough for me.”

“What are you doing?” the young man exclaimed.

Toph snickered. She liked how he was so surprised. “It seems to me like I’m having fun,” she said. Toph nuzzled his neck, licked his cheek.

The young man pushed her away violently. “How old are you?” he cried out. “You’re not supposed to be doing this!”

“What are you, a wuss?” Toph stomped on the ground briefly to see where the young man was, then bent up bits of the ground, turned them into cuffs and used them to pin the boy’s wrists and ankles against the wall.

“… You’re,” the young man grunted as if trying to pull away. “You’re blind! How did you do that?”

“You talk too much.” Toph teased. She stood up on the tip of her toes as she wrapped her arms around the boy’s neck. He kept moving his lips away, but she still kissed him on the cheeks and neck.

As she did, she sensed a group of people approaching. From their voices, they were about his age, and they laughed and whooped when they saw them.

“Hey, Piao, aren’t you the lady-killer?” taunted a young man.

“That’s what you get for smelling as good as you do, Piao,” his friend said.

“He’s just too sexy, you know,” a young woman said. “The little baby Yangs just have to throw themselves at him.”

“Stop!” Piao begged Toph. “I’m bonded. You’re too young. I said stop it!”

“Shut up!” Toph snapped. Bolstered by the goading of the new crowd, Toph kissed him on the lips this time. The trio erupted into cheers and applause.

Then Toph felt a slab of earth hit her hard. She cried out as she skidded against the ground. Almost immediately though, she leaped to her feet, her anger even greater because of the passion she had felt a few moments earlier. “Who did that to me?” she demanded.

No answer came, but Toph felt the ground around her feet rise and try to encase her. Toph leaped backwards when she realized what was happening, only to feel another huge slab of earth slam against her back. She could hear the crowd gasp as she fell forward.

As Toph picked herself off the ground, she could sense the firm tread of the earthbender. The bender’s feet were narrow – the first tip to Toph that her opponent was female. When she spoke, her voice had the scratchy bray of someone very old.

“I am Mo Li,” said the bender. “And you owe that Yin an apology, little girl.”

Toph growled and stretched out her hands, lifting large chunks of the earth and sending them flying in the direction she thought Mo Li’s voice was coming from. Mo Li groaned in pain. The ground sent out a mini shockwave as she fell to the ground. The trio erupted into whispers of “Did you see that?” and “I thought she was blind.” Toph snickered and turned away.

Then she felt the earth rise up to smack her in the chin. Toph stumbled again. This time the ground caught her by the wrists and ankles, then pulled her arms and legs apart so that she was spread eagled. Toph tried her best to fight against it, struggled to make the earth stop and crumble, but it kept moving, stretching her further apart.

“It hurts!” Toph wailed. She was good at making herself cry if she needed to, and she was getting scared enough that it was easy. “How can you do this to me, you mean old lady? I’m just a poor little blind girl!”

“If you’re old enough to go hunting in the jungle, you can play with the big tigers,” Mo Li said, her words emphasized with another harsh tug on Toph’s limbs. “Now, acknowledge me as the superior Yang.”

“What?”

Toph felt her legs stretched even further, and this time she screamed for real. The ground below her rose again, moved up to cover her chest and pressed down onto her.

“Stop!” Toph yelled. “Stop it! Stop it!”

“You didn’t stop when he asked, did you?”

Fear hit Toph like a boulder. Fear and helplessness. 

“Now acknowledge me,” Mo Li said. “Say you’re sorry to Piao. Say, ‘I acknowledge you as my superior Yang.’”

“I …” Toph sniffled. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I acknowledge you as my superior Yang.”

The earth disintegrated around her in a cloud of dust. Toph scrambled to sit up, wrapped her arms around her legs so she was curled into a ball. She was vaguely aware of Mo Li admonishing the trio to go home, of her telling Piao to go home to his girlfriend and not to worry. Mostly, though, Toph was too busy feeling sorry for herself. It had made her feel so good to do that to Piao. He had smelled so good and she had felt so strong. Toph felt tears slide down her cheeks. She’d never feel that way again.

Mo Li’s steps vibrated along the ground, coming closer. The woman crouched next to Toph and laid a bony hand on her shoulder. She smelled strong, powerful. Toph hated it.

“What more do you want, grandma?” Toph snapped. “You proved I’m a helpless blind girl. Are you happy, now? Leave me alone.”

“You’re not helpless,” Mo Li said, her raspy voice now much more kind and gentle. “You’re a little tiger who hasn’t been tamed, who hasn’t been told who she is.”

“And what am I?” Toph asked, wiping her eyes.

“You’re a powerful earthbender, one of the most powerful I’ve ever had the pleasure to fight,” Mo Li said. “I think if this weren’t your first fight I may not have won. I can move the earth, but you can hear it. And you’re a Yang, just like me. You’re a natural-born leader. A force of nature. You can breed Yins with life, then protect them and your children with impunity and honor. But, if you don’t learn how to control the urges that make you strong, they will make you nothing more than a bully.”

Toph sucked in a breath. Mo Li took Toph by the hands, pulled her to her feet.

“Now, will you join me at home for a few hours?” Mo Li asked. “We have much to talk about.”

~*~*~

Toph didn’t have to see Mo Li’s home to know that she was rich. From what she could sense, it wasn’t as big as her parents’ estate, but it was larger than the houses surrounding it. The hinges of the gate squeaked as Mo Li led Toph to a stone path. Toph could hear water bubbling in standing pools along the path. A sweet scent hung in the air.

“What’s that flower?” Toph asked.

“The White Lotus,” Mo Li said.

Another door creaked open. Toph stepped inside the home after Mo Li and felt wood beneath her feet. She heard someone running toward them.

“Mo Li! You’re back!” a woman said. Her voice was that of an adult’s, but she was at least several decades younger than Mo Li. She smelled really nice, too, although her scent was mixed with Mo Li’s. Toph could hear the kiss with which they greeted each other.

“My Chung Ae,” Mo Li whispered. She gave the woman another kiss, and then her voice turned stern. “We have a guest tonight. Make us some tea. Something flowery. No, wait. Oolong. We’ll eat it with cake.”

“All right. Welcome to our home, Miss,” Chung Ae said.

“Dear, she’s blind. She can’t see you bow.”

“Oh! Sorry, Miss. I’ll get the tea and cake for you.”

Chung Ae kissed Mo Li again. The old lady was silent as she walked away.

“So she’s your Yin?” Toph asked.

Mo Li sighed, “My fifth. Most likely my last. I don’t know how much longer she’ll want to stay. When I was young I taught earthbending, and it made me a better mentor than companion. Come.” She placed her hand lightly on Toph’s back, leading her into what seemed by the slight change in the placement of the wood slats to be another room. The table and chairs inside were also made of wood, and Mo Li pushed Toph’s chair behind her before sitting down across from her.

“Do you have any questions?” Mo Li asked.

Toph scratched her hair awkwardly. “Well, I get what you told me on the way here about Yins and Yangs and making babies and stuff. I just don’t get why my dad couldn’t just tell me. Or why my dad was so upset I could be a Yang.”

“The idea that only men are Yang and only women are Yin goes back centuries, even though societies where those who weren’t lived openly are older than I. The Earth Kingdom seems to be slowly acknowledging the reality more and more, even if the people don’t always accept it. Still, I remember the first decades of the war, back when the Fire Nation was only colonizing and not openly attacking the Kingdom and we had more time for frivolous nonsense. My sister and I spent years in classes meant to prepare Yins for the day when we would be presented to our betrothed. Beauty treatments. How to pose in the way most alluring to a Yang. How to discreetly deal with a heat. I think if my older sister hadn’t been such a perfect Yin I would have been forced into a marriage with a male Yang for appearances’ sake. Instead, I was spared.”

“But you told me that we can’t have babies,” Toph said. “How would that even work?”

“It wouldn’t. Not really. The best you could hope for were a pair of understanding parents who could make an arrangement with the parents of a male Yin equally eager to hide himself. So long as you hid who had the pregnancy, and slathered yourselves in perfume, you could go about being a happy couple with none the wiser. If you were unfortunate enough to be paired with a Yang male, well … I had a friend once who described her marriage in the way you’d describe this war. She’d endure painful, heat-less lovemaking she hated and spend nights at Yin brothels. It’s no way to live.”

It didn’t sound that way to Toph. She was about to ask what happened to them when she heard Chung Ae’s steps again. Toph waited with impatience as the Yin poured the two of them tea, then left again. As Toph picked up her cup and took a sip, Mo Li began speaking again.

“Of course, we grew up in Ba Sing Se … a vast and wealthy city in a time of plenty. And if my parents were here, they would argue that such harsh rules were all that stood between us and our worse instincts. Without them we’d be essentially beasts, lustful and mindless Yangs eager to subdue wanton and debased Yins. It’s nonsense, of course. I’ve traveled all over the Earth Kingdom in my eight decades. I’ve seen poor villages where young Yins and Yangs choose mates based on lust and without thought to whether their mate was male or female. I’ve seen Kyoshi Island, where female Yins and Yangs fight together as sister warriors. I’ve even been to a swamp where the people who live there are waterbenders, and almost all of them are in-betweens, men with the properties of both Yins and Yangs. The cities, however …,” Mo Li sighed and sipped her tea. “I think the only one that doesn’t cling to such prejudice and ceremony is Omashu, but as a city built from lovers forbidden from seeing each other, it would be the cruelest joke if it were anything less.

“But, enough of my travelogue. I want to talk about you for a bit.” The tea inside her cup swished as she placed it back on the table. “I want you to tell me why you attacked that boy.”

“Huh?” Toph put down her teacup as well. “Didn’t you just tell me that I did that because I’m a Yang?”

“That’s why you had the instinct to do it. But why did you do it? What was going through your mind?”

“Well …” Toph searched for words and, when she couldn’t find them, tried to find the cake on the table instead. After a few minutes of Toph moving her hand around and not hitting it, Mo Li grabbed her hand and placed a slice in it. Toph shrugged as she curled her fingers around it.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “It all just felt so overwhelming. It was like being starving and having a bunch of food suddenly thrust in my face.” Toph bit into the cake. It tasted good, if plain. She sucked on her fingers.

“What did you want from him?”

That was a good question. Toph slumped back in her chair, kicked her legs a bit as she tried to think. “I wanted … I wanted to fight him.”

“Hurt him?” Mo Li pressed.

Toph shook her head. “No. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense. It doesn’t even make sense to me. But I wanted to catch him and fight him and have him fight me back. Not that he’d win. I’d win. But it would be fun, fighting him and winning.” She was being vague but she could feel it all in her mind so vividly: the boy writhing under her, struggling to get away as she tightened her hold on him.

Mo Li made a noise that seemed to indicate understanding, if not approval. “And then what?”

“I don’t know,” Toph said. She squirmed in her seat. This felt like something you shouldn’t be telling a grown-up. When she spoke again, her voice was breathy. “He’d have to do whatever I said, then. Wouldn’t he?”

Mo Li didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she sipped her tea. Toph couldn’t bear the silence. She started to remember being in the grip of Mo Li’s bending, of feeling scared and helpless.

“It’s wrong to feel this way, isn’t it?” Toph hung her head. “That’s what you were trying to teach me when you earthbent me.”

“No,” Mo Li said. “What you feel is perfectly natural for a Yang. You can’t see, but the symbol of a Yin and Yang is a circle in which dark and light fit together perfectly. If they don’t fit together perfectly, there can be no harmony, only brutality. Where you made the mistake is in pursuing a Yin who didn’t take to your advances with a desire to match your domination with submission.”

Toph snorted. “What does that mean? I have to ask nicely before I pound him into the ground? That’s stupid.”

“You don’t understand. There will be a time when the Yin you pursue falls at your feet and begs for all of your body and power, who screams with delight when you enact your will upon them. It’s better than simply running them over.”

Toph grabbed two cakes and shoved them in her mouth before taking a large gulp of tea. “How can anyone like that?” she asked. “If someone wants to be beaten up you haven’t really beaten them up. You’re like, fake.”

Mo Li grasped onto Toph’s hands. “Listen to me, Little Tiger. This is very important. Yin and Yang are a give and take. Even in the symbol, there’s a circle of light in the dark; a circle of dark in the light. We control them, but they control us in turn with their desire, which calls to us and makes them want them. They submit to us, but in turn we must respect when their desire is not for us.

“Being a Yang means being a leader, and with any leading comes responsibility. You’re young. You must learn how to protect, how to be responsible. You’ve developed very quickly for a Yang. I’d urge you to hold off on mating, at least for a few years, until you’ve learned that responsibility. Mating produces children, after all, and you’re still a child yourself.”

Toph sighed, blew on her bangs in frustration. “My parents have kept me from so much because I’m blind. This is another thing I want but can’t have.”

“I developed young, too, and also among a family that didn’t understand me,” Mo Li said. “Trust me when I say that the wait is worth it. And that life is longer, much longer, than you think.”

Toph pulled her hands away and crossed her arms. A door slid open from somewhere behind her.

“Mo Li!” Chung Ae called. “It’s getting late. Should I start dinner?”

“Yes, Dear,” Mo Li said. “You may make whatever you like tonight. Cook something for our guest, as well.”

Toph frowned as the door slid closed. “That’s a give and take?” she asked after she was sure Chung Ae was out of hearing range. “You basically just told her what to do!”

“Well …” Mo Li said, a little frazzled. “She could have always said no.”

“Come on. You’re older. You obviously have a lot of money. You’re stronger. Just because she can say she doesn’t want to do something doesn’t mean you’re equal.”

Mo Li sipped her tea again, her slurp a little louder this time. “I told you I’m not an ideal companion. I live my life in a space where I can be content as well as fair. My Yins who have found my life too dull or constrictive or found me too demanding have left with my best wishes.”

Toph leaned back in her chair and held up her palms. “Look, all I’m saying is that for all your talk, you seem to live like the powerful ones get to tell the weak ones what to do. To me, that seems like the way the world is. I can’t do anything I like because my parents are in charge of me. We all have rules to follow because we’re ruled by a king. This Fire Nation keeps taking our villages because they’re stronger. Isn’t this idea that the Yins have power too just a fantasy?”

Mo Li growled in disgust. “You’re smart, Little Tiger, but you’re too young to be so cynical. No, I don’t believe it’s a fantasy. If the spirits wanted Yangs to rule with impunity they wouldn’t have gifted Yins with bending. They wouldn’t have reincarnated the Avatar into a Yin again and again and they wouldn’t have created the in-betweens. For decades I’ve heard that we lost the Air Nomads because their Yin-centered society had angered the spirits. I can’t believe that. They were the most spiritual race of all of us. If they had been going against their will, they would be the first to know.”

“But you still order your Yin around,” Toph said. “And I still want to fight them.”

Mo Li was silent. She rapped her fingers against the table for a minute or so. Then she stopped. Toph could feel a slight shift in the floor as Mo Li leaned back into her chair.

“Let me tell you a story, one that dates many centuries ago. What I put you through earlier today, beating you and making you acknowledge me as your superior, has its equivalents in many other cultures as a way of discipline, of shaming a Yang into control by teaching them the fear that comes with weakness, especially in those with less formalized rules than the Earth Kingdom’s cities. The Northern Water Tribe calls it The Chastising. The Fire Nation’s method of dueling, the Agni Kai, has its roots in it. I’ll tell you what happens when someone has not learned that empathy.

“There was once an Avatar who was known in his early life as Kyung the Furious. He was born into the Earth Kingdom, the son of a reprobate Yang who abandoned his family and a Yin mother who died of an illness when Kyung was eight years old, leaving him alone. Even back then, when Ba Sing Se was just a large village, we were the biggest country. With no family or peers, the Earth King’s soldiers did not find the Avatar until he was seventeen, when he shot fire at storekeeper he had been trying to rob.

“Kyung had grown up hard, and it made him cruel. He not only had a long record of petty crimes by the time he’d been found, but he’d also bred and abandoned three separate Yins. The Earth King had been horrified when he learned of this, asked if there was any way that this could be a mistake, but Kyung could bend both earth and fire, and he passed all other tests proving the identity of the Avatar.

“Taking up the mantle of the Avatar turned Kyung’s resentment and pain into a righteous arrogance. He would later write that he felt abandoned by the world, and saw that he could bend the elements to his will as a type of revenge. He learned the master moves of earthbending with ease, but in fighting he took a sadistic glee in not just winning, but humiliating his opponents.

“Nevertheless, out of fear that the world had waited long enough for its Avatar, his earthbending master passed him despite reservations, and Kyung traveled to the Fire Nation for training. Once again, he learned quickly. Within a year he was ready for his firebending test. However, instead of his master, the Crown Prince insisted on being Kyung’s opponent. Nobody knows for certain why the Prince made this decision, although many believe that he was secretly a Yin and had a crush on the Avatar, that the match was an effort to impress Kyung into mating him.

“If so, it didn’t work. When the Crown Prince entered the ring, the Avatar was said to have had the cruelest smile his master had ever seen. And as the master sounded the gong to indicate the beginning of the match, the Avatar immediately hit the Prince with a massive blast of lightning.”

Toph’s mouth dropped open. “Lightning?”

“Yes. Not even his master knew Kyung was capable of that. But it didn’t end there, as soon as the Crown Prince was down the Avatar immediately jumped on him. He beat him with his fists, cackling as he did it. His master had to pull him away, and even then he still laughed.”

Toph couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Every story she’d ever heard of an Avatar made them seem like some distant arbiter of justice, something more than human. Could an Avatar really be so petty and cruel?

“What happened next,” Mo Li continued, “was something that had never happened before and has never happened since. Representatives from each nation met for a summit, and discussed whether or not they should kill the Avatar."

“No way …” Toph whispered.

“Yes. By the rules of the summit, full agreement was needed for such a drastic action. The Fire Lord, still incensed over what happened to her son, demanded his head. The Earth King, embarrassed by the country’s failure to care for its Avatar, was unwilling to stop her. The chieftain of the Northern Water Tribe was also in favor. The last in the cycle had been Avatar Sedna, a gentle and loving Yin woman from the Northern Water Tribe who was assassinated at forty years old after a long and ultimately successful campaign to allow the female members of that tribe, who had once been banned from doing any type of waterbending, to become healers. The chieftain had believed Kyung’s viciousness was the spirits’ revenge for their iniquity, and they feared retribution when he came to their tribe for training.

“It was up to Anil, the head monk of the Southern Air Temple. For centuries, the Air Nomads had held the belief that all life is precious, but Monk Anil was not blind to the magnitude of what Kyung had done, and of what he could become. He bowed his head before announcing his decision.

“‘Bring Avatar Kyung to me personally,’ he said. ‘If I can’t make him kind, I will deliver him to the Fire Lord.’

“When the Avatar came to the temple for training, Monk Anil placed the reigns of a young sky bison in his hands. ‘This is Nini,’ he said. ‘When you’ve proven you can care for her, you can learn airbending.’”

“Kyung was incensed, dismissed such a task as the work of Yins. But he wanted to learn airbending, so he had to accept. He spent days watching with jealousy as the other airbending students flew through the air on gliders while he learned to feed, clean and groom the beast. And Nini, while gentle, had the disgusting habits common to her species. Kyung wrote that he believed the bison also sensed his antipathy, and that made her stubborn in the face of his care.

“Then, one day, Nini grew very ill. Kyung first dismissed it as the bison trying to get attention, but within a day, Nini could barely stand. Faced with the possibility of never being able to learn airbending, Kyung flew into a panic. He spent every moment at her side, diligently feeding her and giving her medicine, only sleeping a few hours at a time in her pen. As he worked, he thought of his own children for the first time in years. He thought of the Fire Lord, of her sitting by the Crown Prince’s bedside, and he learned shame.

“Avatar Sedna worked through Kyung that night, took over his body and used it to heal the bison. When Kyung reported to Monk Anil the next day, the monk told him he was ready for airbending, but Kyung hung his head.

“‘You tried to teach me empathy and selflessness, but I haven’t learned it,’ Kyung said. ‘I didn’t really care about Nini. I wanted to be an airbender. Everything I did, I did out of selfishness. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done out of lust. I once lost everything, and now I crave power and control. I’m unworthy to be the Avatar.’

“Monk Anil shook his head. ‘You have realized your faults, and turned impure urges into acts of lovingkindness. You have a long way to go, but you are on the right path at last.’

“And he was, indeed. He learned airbending, and when he left the air temple to become a waterbender, Nini came with him. He visited the Fire Nation Crown Prince and made amends. He found his former lovers and, after begging their forgiveness, got them placements in the Earth King’s court so his children would always be taken care of.

“His greatest accomplishment as the Avatar was dismantling a city-state ruled by a horrible trio of Yang earthbenders who treated their Yin subjects with cruelty and oppression. They used the Yins for their own pleasure without thinking of their Yins’ desires and had killed any Yang, even their own children, who tried to oppose them. Avatar Kyung spent years after the rulers’ defeat trying to help the Yins rebuild their lives.

“But most of his time as Avatar was not marked by any major wars. He still had a vicious temper and a love for fighting, so he poured his energies into teaching. Benders from every nation came to his school, and left the strongest warriors of their kind.

“Kyung’s lusts were also great. He had fallen in love with Monk Anil, and came back to the Southern Air Temple often to beg the monk take him as his Yang. Monk Anil initially doubted his sincerity, but Kyung was persistent, would wait outside the cell door during Anil’s heats, begging to be let in. When Anil finally consented, they lived happily for many decades.

“A simple monk had tamed an Avatar the world had once feared would bring destruction in the place of balance. A Yin had turned a vicious Yang into a good man.”

Mo Li paused for a minute before continuing. When speaking again, she sounded very sad.

“We live in precarious times once again, Little Tiger. The Avatar is gone. Our Kingdom faces increasing peril with each passing day. The nations which once came together in times of crisis now battle for survival.

“I’m not a spiritual woman, but when I see you I believe that destiny has marked you like it marked Kyung. You’re young. You’re powerful. I think someone like you could help change the world, but you have to choose it.”

“And until then?” Toph asked.

The screen doors slid open. The smell of delicious pork and rice hit her nose.

“For now? Eat,” Mo Li said.

~*~*~

She might have needed to wait for her freedom, and even for this destiny Mo Li was convinced she had, but Toph saw no reason why she had to give up everything she wanted.

The aggression of being a Yang had a greater hold on Toph than any desire to mate. The next time she escaped her parents’ home, she found the Earth Rumble VI tournament. Near the end of the match, announcer Xin Fu asked the audience if anyone could defeat the Big Bad Hippo, reigning champion of the tournament. She raised her hand.

The Hippo was big and strong, but that only made his tread easier to sense. She’d been in a fight now, knew what to expect. Exhilaration gripped her as she hurled the stones at him, as she dodged his attacks with ease. He growled as he struggled to hit her, reeking of aggression and sweat. With her final blow he fell hard, shaking the ground like an earthquake and sealing her victory.

Toph leaped onto his back, raised her fists and took in the crowd’s growing applause. In this moment she was no longer helpless, no longer weak. She was everything she had ever wanted to be.

“What’s your name?” Xin Fu asked as he gave her the championship belt.

“I am the Blind Bandit!” she yelled, raising it over her head. “And I am the greatest earthbender in the world!”

The crowd cheered.

End Part Three.


	4. The Fire Nation

~*~*~

“That’s the trouble with being a ruler, isn’t it, Zuzu? In the end, there can only be one.”

Azula’s words, spoken a few short months ago, echoed in Zuko’s mind as he sat in his quarters on the ship. Uncle Iroh stood in front of him. It surprised Zuko when he was this close; Zuko was still getting used to his uncle’s smell, but Iroh’s hands were gentle as they reached behind his head and untied the bandage around his eye. Zuko’s fingers were pressed against it, and after he felt the straps come loose he peeled it slowly from the damaged skin. He forced his left eye open, his vision blurry as he tried to focus on his uncle’s disappointed face.

“It’s not any better, is it?” Zuko asked.

Iroh paused before speaking. “I don’t think re-bandaging it would help, no.”

Zuko growled and held out his hand. “Just give me the mirror.”

His uncle frowned as he took it from the table, placed it in Zuko’s hand. His face looked awful, Zuko thought. He traced the grooves of the angry red scar with his fingertips.

“I … I think it gives your face character,” Iroh said, his mouth locked in a smile so wide it looked painful.

“Don’t patronize me!” Zuko spat.

Iroh placed his hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “This will be hard for you, my nephew, but it can be overcome.”

Zuko bristled under his touch. “I need to be alone right now, Uncle.”

Iroh removed his hand. “All right,” he said, and Zuko tried to ignore the rejection in his voice. “You know where to find me if you need me.”

The metal door closed behind him. Zuko looked back at his reflection for a few more moments before moving to the bed. He stared at the ceiling, tried to forget Azula’s words.

“There can only be one.”

~*~*~

Zuko first got the hint that his uncle was different years ago.

He hadn’t known the difference between Yin and Yang then, beyond that sometimes he wasn’t allowed to see his mother until very late in the evening or the next day and there were some rooms in the palace that he was forbidden from entering. He knew a little bit about child bearing because of Azula, but even then he was too young to remember much about his mother’s pregnancy, a life before his sister.

She was a part of this memory, too: barely a year old, her tiny fists wrapped around the back of a chair in the main room of their house at Ember Island. It had been a rare vacation when everyone was there, not just his mother and father but his uncle and Lu Ten as well. Zuko sat in his mother’s lap, enjoying her touch and the scent of her perfume while his father and uncle spoke to each other.

“Zuzu!” Azula called out. “Zuzu!”

Zuko ignored her. Even back then, she used her baby babble to give commands. He pressed himself closer to his mother.

“Zuzu!” she screamed this time.

Ozai groaned and slammed down his cup of tea. “Zuko, help your sister.”

“She’s fine,” Zuko yawned. “She wants to walk. You can’t walk yet, Azula. You’re a baby.”

Azula growled, gripped harder onto the chair. “Zuzu!”

“Go help her, Zuko,” Ursa said, gently pushing him off her lap and to his feet. “For me, all right?”

Zuko sighed and walked over to his sister, his hands outstretched. Azula grasped onto them. Her baby face scrunched up as she took one step, then another. This was so boring, he thought as he walked backwards, guiding her at a sloth-snail’s pace across the room. After he’d led her around the room twice, he let go of her hands. “Okay, you have to go crawl on your own, Azula.”

Azula looked up at him and glared.

Zuko turned to go, and Azula’s hands grabbed onto the back of his shirt.

“Hey!” Zuko tried to walk away, but Azula kept her grip on him, following every step. As he walked faster, she picked up the pace and laughed. Zuko could hear the adults laughing, too. Even his mother said it was adorable.

Zuko made an attempt to wrench out of her grasp, but he slipped on the carpet and fell. Azula went down after him, collapsing onto his legs. His mother rushed to their side, but Azula was still laughing.

“Eleven months old and already resourceful,” Ozai said to Iroh, pride swelling in his voice.

Iroh murmured assent. “She’s very smart, but it is best not to make assumptions about your children while they are still so young.”

Ursa placed Azula on her feet before helping Zuko. She lifted up his chin. “Are you hurt?”

“Only a little,” Zuko said.

His mother smiled as she picked up Azula and took his hand. “Let’s all play together this time.” She led them to the toybox, but Zuko still kept an ear to his father and uncle.

“What are you saying, Iroh?” Ozai asked. “Are you chiding me for taking pride in my child?”

“Children grow over a long period of time, and much can change. You cannot make your decisions about them too early,” Iroh sipped his tea. “When I had Lu Ten, I thought he would be just like me, but he is unlike anyone I have ever met.”

Zuko picked up a ball, bounced it up and down as his mother tried to interest Azula in a stuffed toy dragon.

Ozai laughed. “Indeed. So, ‘I had’ Lu Ten? Admitting it at last, eh?”

Ursa gasped loudly enough that Zuko flinched. The ball bounced off his head, hurting him.

Uncle Iroh, for his part, just held the teacup in his hand for a minute and smiled. “You always told me you had no time to hear about my conquests, Ozai.”

~*~*~

“He’s a pervert.”

Azula’s cruel tone bothered Zuko as much as her words. He had been sitting by the turtle-duck pond when she ran over to him, a snotty smile on her face. He was ten years old back then; she was eight.

“What are you talking about?”

Azula sat cross-legged next to him, her elbows on her knees and her chin resting on the backs of her hands. “You know what Yins and Yangs are, don’t you?”

Zuko frowned. “Yeah. I’m not stupid, Azula.” His teacher had gone over that shortly before school ended that year.

“Well, Uncle isn’t either one,” Azula said. “He can make Yins have babies and give birth to them, too. Nobody knows if he carried Lu Ten or not. It’s really gross.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Zuko turned his head back to the turtle-duck pond, trying to dismiss her. “Uncle’s a general. Of course he’s a Yang.”

“He should be. But he’s not,” Azula sighed dramatically. “He’s always been a weirdo, though. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s a freak, too.”

“Shut up!” Zuko whirled back to her, his fist raised. “It’s not true. You’re just saying that because you hate him.”

“Fine. Don’t believe me,” Azula pushed a few strands of hair out of her face. Then she narrowed her eyes and smiled at Zuko. “But answer me this: Yangs are leaders, right? Even if he’s not a pervert, do you really think that he’s the best example of a Yang? Our father would incinerate him in an Agni Kai.”

Zuko could feel the heat growing in his fingertips as he stormed away from the pond.

“You always get so mad whenever I talk about Uncle,” Azula said, following him. “Why is that, Zuzu?”

“Go away!” Zuko yelled. His hands were hotter now.

“Are you like him? Is that it, Zuzu? Are you a pervert too? Or are you a Yin? You probably are. What kind of Yang would need his mommy to protect him all the time?”

“I told you to shut up!” Zuko screamed as he whirled around, fire shooting out of his hands.

It was at that point that their mother overheard them, broke up the fight. Zuko couldn’t remember what she said, but he could remember how triumphant Azula looked.

~*~*~

The truth, which he would never admit to Azula – or anyone, was that sometimes he was afraid that he wasn’t a Yang.

Azula would be a Yang, of course. She had no doubts about that and nobody else did either, especially not their father. Ozai didn’t discuss mating very much, although he would sometimes talk about being Yang in the context of being a leader. Zuko wouldn’t fail to notice that his father always had his eyes on Azula as he spoke.

Naturally Zuko wanted to be a Yang. What Fire Nation boy didn’t? To be a Yin was to be weak, a natural slave easily reduced to leech-like emotion and mindless need. To be a Yang was to be strong and superior.

And yet Zuko could understand his mother far better than his father, sometimes felt such a greater affinity for her that he was certain his father disdained him for it, instinctively knew he was weak. In a moment of fear, he’d once asked his mother if she liked being a Yin.

Ursa smiled at him, placed a hand against his cheek. “I like being your mother,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me, Zuko.”

He lost his nerve and didn’t press further.

Sometimes he tried to consider what his life would be like if he wasn’t a Yang. To be a pervert was to be disgusting, to be a half-man and a joke. Although Zuko thought it would be better than being a Yin. Sometimes Zuko would try to imagine submitting to another boy or a girl, imagine himself being held down as the other person kissed or touched him, holding still as something long and smooth entered him. The idea made him feel stifled, even angry, but he wasn’t sure if he felt that way genuinely or felt that way because he wanted to.

He kept these thoughts close to his chest, focused his energies on learning firebending, on becoming a swordsman, on trying to be strong. Yet every time he stumbled, every time he was disarmed or his fire didn’t burn as brightly as he hoped, he would wonder.

~*~*~

At eleven years old, it was traditional for Fire Nation youth to go through a divination ceremony. Despite the name it didn’t truly involve fortune telling. Conducted by a Fire Sage or priest in the presence of their parents, the children would be presented with two baskets containing cloths, one scented with the secretions of many Yins in heat, the other many Yangs in lust. The youth was declared a Yin or Yang based on which one they reacted to more strongly. It didn’t always work properly. If done too early, the child would have no reaction at all, and there was no way to test for perverts, but generally it was considered a good indicator.

Zuko might have gotten a ceremony, but that was the year Lu Ten died. The year his mother disappeared and his father ascended the throne. Being Yin or Yang ultimately came second to becoming the Crown Prince. In his sorrow, it was sometimes hard to care, anyway. (Although when his uncle returned to the palace – his long black hair now a dingy gray – it made life easier. It was during this time that Zuko realized Iroh wore perfume, but he didn’t ask why.)

At twelve years old, Zuko grew almost a foot taller, filled out, but the hoped-for sense of smell didn’t come.

At thirteen years old, on his sister’s eleventh birthday, Fire Lord Ozai announced a ceremony.

~*~*~

Before the ceremony, a father or mother traditionally dressed their son or daughter, a last childhood ritual before the boy or girl became an adult. That had changed in the last hundred years. With so many fathers away or, sadly, killed in the war, a new tradition developed in which children would prepare for the ceremony with their friends.

Zuko had watched from his window that morning as Ty Lee and Mai arrived at the palace, greeted Azula with open arms. The Fire Lord had already let Zuko know through a servant that unexpected business had come up and he was too busy to help before the ceremony. As the time came to prepare, Zuko readied to wash when he heard a knock on his door. His heart raced. Could it really be him? Zuko hadn’t realized how much he’d been smiling until he opened the door, until he saw his uncle standing there and tried, unsuccessfully, to hold the smile.

Zuko found it hard to look in his uncle’s eyes as he got into the bath. The water felt nice on his body, at least. He could tell Iroh had heated the bucket before he poured it on his skin.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, Prince Zuko,” Iroh said as he scrubbed his back.

Zuko laughed nervously. “I guess you’ve gone through this all before.”

As soon as he said it, he realized just how true that was. Iroh stopped scrubbing. Zuko hung his head.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Iroh said nothing, then started scrubbing Zuko’s back again. It was only when they finished with the bath, when Iroh wrapped a towel around Zuko to dry him, that Iroh spoke again.

“Sometimes I wonder if this tradition is really for the parents, not the children,” Iroh said. “Of course children enjoy it. Children are always eager to grow up. It’s the adults who are always looking to the past.”

“I just want to know what I am,” Zuko said. “I’m thirteen!”

Iroh laughed loudly as he scrubbed the towel against Zuko’s hair. “Ahh, Zuko, so many adults who know that they’re Yin or Yang have no idea what they are.”

Zuko frowned.

It was time to dress. Iroh pulled the white robes over his head and tied his belt. He brushed Zuko’s hair and styled it into a ponytail. His hands gripped firmly on Zuko’s shoulders when they were done.

“You look handsome,” Iroh said with a warm smile.

His uncle’s words should have cheered him, he knew, but at this last moment the anxieties of the past few years suddenly flared in his heart.

“I don’t want to go out there,” Zuko said, and his face burned with shame. “I … I know that doesn’t make sense with what I said before about wanting to know what I am, but … I don’t know.”

Iroh sighed and patted his shoulders. “My son was lucky. There is no reason you can’t be lucky as well, my nephew. But, if you are not, try to remember what I said.”

They were the first to enter the Fire Lord’s throne room. It would be an intimate ceremony for Zuko and his sister: just the sages and their father, observing behind his wall of flames. A spark of resentment and hurt flared through Zuko. Couldn’t his father sit with him? Still, he bowed to his father and the sages when he entered, sat with Iroh to his father’s left. Three sages stood in front of them and to the Fire Lord’s right, stacks of baskets tied in pairs in back of them, a table with a scroll and candles in front.

Azula entered the throne room next, Ty Lee and Mai on either side of her. His sister had taken to wearing makeup lately, and even in the plain robes she looked like she was going to a ball. Ty Lee looked around the throne room, her mouth opened and her eyes bright with awe. Mai kept her head down, although Zuko thought at one point she tried to meet his eyes and blushed.

The head sage nodded as the girls sat down. He stepped forward, turned and bowed in the direction of the throne. “Fire Lord Ozai, I request your permission to begin.”

“Granted,” Ozai responded. He made two jabbing motions in the air, and the candles lit.

The Fire Sage unrolled the scroll and read. “As small sparks turn into great flames, so do our children grow up and grow strong. Like a master firebender, we guide them now in their path.” He set the scroll down, held out his hands on either side of him. The sage on his right placed a tied pair of baskets in his right hand; the sage on his left gave him a knife.

The head sage cut the ties, arranged the baskets on the table. Zuko knew there was a mark on the bottom of the basket that indicated whether the scent inside was that of a Yin or Yang. Long ago the sages would present the Yin scent in a gold basket and the Yang scent in a red basket, but a centuries-old rumor maintained that the boy who became Fire Lord Bhakdi had pretended to be aroused by the Yin scent and hid his true self for years. So the baskets were colored brown and placed left or right at random.

“By tradition, the youngest is the first to be tested. Princess Azula?”

Azula lowered her head. “Fire Sages, my friends have not had their ceremony. As part of their assisting me, they have requested that they be tested too. I ask that they precede me.”

Mai’s face twisted into a grimace as she turned to Azula. “What?”

Zuko had to agree. Ordinary people never preceded royalty in such a ceremony, and Azula was hardly generous. He looked at his uncle, but Iroh seemed uncharacteristically far away.

“It’s fine,” Azula said, a smile on her face. “Go on. You’ve told me before that you wanted to know what you are. Right?”

Mai scowled.

“Well,” Ty Lee leaped to her feet. “I’m younger than Mai. I guess I’m first then.” She bowed to the sages.

The sages stepped back as Ty Lee took her place at the table. She opened the basket on the left first, took out the white sheet and pressed it to her nose. Her eyes widened, then she squinted. She sniffed so loud it echoed throughout the chamber, bending forward then backward as she inhaled. Ty Lee sighed and laid down the cloth.

“I think it’s a dud,” Ty Lee said.

Mai groaned. “Try the other one, then?”

“Oh! Heh. I thought it would smell like something, at least.” Ty Lee opened the other basket, brought the cloth to her face. As soon as she sniffed, a red blush suffused her face. “Oooh,” she cooed, then sniffed again. She giggled like someone had told her a dirty joke at a party. “Mmmm …”

The sage on the right looked at the bottom of the basket. His face fell as he took the cloth away from Ty Lee. “I’m sorry my dear,” he said. “But you’re a Yin.”

Zuko felt his breath catch in his throat. He never really liked Ty Lee, always associated her with the worst of Azula’s schemes, but to witness another person hear those dreaded words …

“Oh …” Ty Lee said. Then she smiled brightly. “Okay!”

Zuko’s mouth dropped open. Even Azula looked a little surprised as Ty Lee skipped back to her place on floor.

Mai approached the sages next. Zuko always found her difficult to read, but he thought she hesitated before she reached for the new basket on the left. Mai brought the cloth to her face. Upon smelling it she gasped. She crumpled, one hand clutching her stomach as the other grasped the table, her hands white-knuckled as she tried to keep herself from falling. She still breathed heavily as the sage on the left took the cloth from her and peered under the bottom of the basket.

“You’re a Yin as well,” he said, regret in his voice.

Whatever fire burned inside Mai had immediately been smothered. She walked back to her place on the floor with a scowl on her face and her hands balled into fists.

“Princess Azula?” the head sage asked.

As Azula walked to the table, Zuko took the opportunity to steal a glance at their father. The Fire Lord leaned forward, his eyes locked on his daughter.

Azula’s mouth was set in a smirk as she opened the left basket. She lifted the first cloth to her nose, sniffed it, and then set down without any obvious concern. Zuko knew he would be going crazy wondering what the first cloth had been. Azula opened the right one, smelled the cloth.

Her eyes widened and she staggered. Zuko couldn’t help but feel a guilty pleasure in her temporary loss of confidence. Yet Azula quickly regained it. She let out a husky laugh. Her eyes blazed as she licked the cloth greedily.

The sage on the right pulled the cloth away. “You’re a Yang,” he said.

Azula blinked a few times, coming out of the glow of lust. “Of course,” she said, and it sounded like a purr.

Zuko suppressed a groan. Azula didn’t just suspect she was a Yang. She had known before the ceremony even began. She was always ahead of him, he thought bitterly. Always, always, always. He glanced at Ozai and caught him beaming with pride.

“Prince Zuko?” the head sage asked as he cut the string on the final pair of baskets.

Uncle Iroh gave him a pat on the back. Zuko hoped his stride didn’t look as unsure as he felt. As he stood behind the table, his eyes scanned over the others. From behind the flames, his father’s eyes were stern, almost challenging Zuko not to disappoint him. Azula, of course, had that irritating smug look on her face. Mai had her head turned down toward her lap, but Zuko thought he could see her eyes occasionally flicker up to look at him. Ty Lee’s focus was on Mai; she rubbed her hand on her back, tried to get Mai to look at her. Uncle Iroh was pretty much unreadable, although when he caught Zuko looking at him, he smiled.

Zuko couldn’t stall any longer. His hands fumbled as he opened the basket to his right. He took out the cloth and pressed it against his face.

“Oh.” He meant to whisper it but the word came out as a breathy moan.

Zuko hadn’t expected to feel so strong. It was like firebending in the middle of a hot summer day, only better. He felt like he could set the world aflame if he wanted to. Zuko rubbed the cloth against his cheek. He could feel his skin warm, a growing need in his chest that moved lower.

It was so good Zuko couldn’t stop himself from snarling when the fire sage took the cloth away. But when he came to his senses, when the desire started to fade, joy and deep relief replaced it.

“Yang,” the fire sage said.

Zuko looked up at his father, and his father was nodding at him, the corner of his mouth turned up slightly in approval. He then looked at Azula.

Her red-painted lips were twisted with rage. Zuko just snickered.

Ozai waved his hand, and the candles went out.

The ceremony was over. Zuko and the girls bowed to the Fire Sages and the Fire Lord before filing out of the throne room and the palace. Ahead of them, Ty Lee had both of her hands on Mai’s shoulders, and after some whispering they ran off together into the courtyard before the doors closed behind them all.

“How does croc-crow taste, Azula?” Zuko taunted, taking a delight in his own nastiness.

“Prince Zuko!” Iroh chided.

Azula pushed past their uncle and growled, pushing a finger into Zuko’s face. “Say what you want, Zuzu. I’m still tougher than you.”

“All right,” Iroh said, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “It is common for young Yangs to get a little aggressive after such an experience. I think if we all sat down and had a nice cup of …”

“Oh shut your trap, you old kook,” Azula slapped Iroh’s hand away and walked down the steps. Half-way down, she turned back and pointed at Zuko. “Those tests aren’t always right. You’re probably still a pervert.”

Iroh frowned. “Azula, in my day such words were unbecoming of a princess!”

“I have Yins to find,” Azula snapped. She grabbed the edges of her robe as she dashed down the rest of the steps.

Iroh sighed. Zuko started to go back to his room when Iroh spoke again.

“I am disappointed in you, Zuko,” Iroh said. “I know she baits you, but you can do better than to sink to her level.”

Zuko frowned. “I’ve spent years listening to her tell me that I’m going to be a Yin or a pervert. She deserved it.”

“And what if you had been? Would that have justified her cruelty?” Iroh asked. “How are you deciding right or wrong? By justice or by might?”

Zuko rolled his eyes. As if it was that big a deal. “I’m going back to my room.”

However, when he was away from Uncle Iroh, when he traversed the walkway adjacent to the garden, he passed by the fountain. Ty Lee and Mai were sitting by themselves next to it. Ty Lee held Mai’s hand as the somber girl rested it on her own lap. Zuko was ready to pass without a thought, but Mai’s words stopped him.

“Will you quit telling me it will be okay?”

“But it will be!” Ty Lee said, her voice crackling with cheerfulness. “They say if you’re a Yin and with the right person that mating can be loads of fun.”

Zuko hid behind the column. He wasn’t sure why he was listening, because he usually wasn’t that interested in what the girls had to say. He wondered if his uncle’s words were making him feel guiltier than he liked.

Mai pulled her hand away. “Yeah, well, I’m sure that really good sex will make up for being ordered around and treated like trash for the rest of the month.”

“I don’t think it’s like that,” Ty Lee smiled, look up to the sky wistfully. “I think we have lots of convincing methods to getting our way, if you know what I mean.” She winked.

“Oh, right,” Mai took the hair that hung down behind her right ear and whirled it around her fingers. “‘Oh, you’re such a big strong Yang. Will you marry me? Will you have children with me? Will you do favors for me? I smell nice, so you have to. Except, oh no, you’re a Yang, so you don’t really.’” Mai untangled her hand and groaned. “That’s not power. That’s not strength. And if you think so, you’re stupid.”

Ty Lee sighed. “Mai, I really think you should be positive about this.”

Mai crossed her arms. “I’ve spent my life taking orders from my parents, and now I’m going to spend the rest of my life in another cage.”

“Hey,” Ty Lee wiggled her index finger, tapped the end of Mai’s nose. “You’re forgetting one very important thing that’s changed, aren’t you?”

Mai blushed, then smirked. “I guess I just didn’t expect it this way.”

Zuko wondered what she was talking about, but he then heard Azula calling their names. The anger that he had felt before flared up again, and he left before any of them could spot him.

~*~*~

Azula was still wrong about him being a pervert.

Within three months, Zuko’s sense of smell had kicked in with a vengeance. Most of the palace guards were Yangs, but the servants were a different story. The majority of them wore perfume but sometimes throughout the day he could tell when the perfume began to fade and their natural scent kicked in. It was almost annoying, the effect they had on him. He once found himself following his father’s valet around for an hour until Uncle Iroh caught him by the arm and dragged him to firebending practice.

“I did not miss these years,” Iroh grumbled as they went.

Zuko thought Uncle Iroh was being unfair. He never wanted to hurt anybody. He had fantasies typical of a Yang, like holding a Yin down and mating them, keeping them stuck on his knot until he filled them again and again. (And having the knot finally appear had been an exciting relief. The first time it formed he came so much the servant burnt the sheets rather than cleaned them.) Still, he never wanted to seriously injure someone. Beating them in a fight would be one thing, but making them bleed seemed dishonorable.

Although sometimes he would worry that he would have to use force if he wanted a mate, because his attempts at flirting usually went over like leaky war balloons. The worst was when he tried to impress a Yin girl sweeping the floor by telling her he was the prince. She said she knew and went back to work.

Zuko thought he might have better luck with Jie, one of the palanquin carriers. Almost all of the men on the job were Yangs, but Jie was uncharacteristically muscular for a Yin, and the arduous work revealed his natural scent more often. He and Uncle Iroh had come back from a trip to one of the mines one day (Zuko had wanted to oversee weapons production, thought it would help him when he became Fire Lord) and Zuko thought he should invite Jie to eat with him at the palace.

A messenger caught Iroh’s attention as soon as they arrived with news of the war front, so Zuko approached Jie. As soon as Jie noticed, he kowtowed, murmuring “Prince Zuko,” as he put his forehead on the ground.

“No, it’s fine. It’s um … I command you, I mean, I would like you …,” Zuko sighed. What was wrong with him? He tried to tap into that strength and confidence he felt before. “Do you enjoy your job?”

“Only if it should please you, Prince Zuko,” Jie said. His voice was rich and deep.

“Well, um, you’re probably hungry, having to work so much,” Zuko said. “So I think you should come to my chambers … that is, if you want to … and …”

Zuko heard a loud, high-pitched sigh.

“This has turned sad too quickly,” said the corresponding voice. Zuko growled as Azula stepped in front of him.

“Jie? Is that your name?” she asked. “Jie, you are an exceptionally muscular and reasonably attractive Yin. I am a Yang and your princess. You will join me in my chambers for tea, at which point I may kiss you if you are not too boring. Zuzu may have wanted to ask you this first, but he’s just been back from the mines and smells like dirt so I think you know the right choice.”

Jie’s confused face turned to Azula, then Zuko, then back to Azula again. “Well, um …”

“Hey!” Zuko yelled, and the confident gleam in Azula’s eyes only made him madder. “Go away. You don’t even want him.”

“Please,” Azula waved her hand at Zuko. “As if you were truly going to take a servant as your consort. Better luck with the next dishwasher you try to impress. Come with me, Jie.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Jie stood up. As Azula turned to leave, Zuko growled and pushed her. Azula snarled and scratched at his face. The two of them dropped into firebender stances but before either of them could make a move Iroh sent a blast of fire over their heads, startling them.

“Enough!” Uncle Iroh bellowed. “For a Prince and Princess to behave this way is shameful. I’m taking you both to your father.”

~*~*~

“The servant shall be banished.”

Zuko looked up from the throne room’s floor. He had been stuck in a kowtow stance for the past twenty minutes as Iroh stood on one knee next to him, explained to their father what happened. Azula was kowtowing on the other side of Iroh, and Zuko thought he could see her smile at their father’s words.

“What?” Iroh asked.

“It’s his fault,” the Fire Lord said dismissively. “If he had worn stronger perfume, this wouldn’t have happened. He’d clearly been asking for trouble. We cannot have a Yin who thinks such distractions are appropriate working in the palace. He would be better suited for the colonies.”

Zuko was horrified at what he was hearing. He opened his mouth to speak, tried to tell his father that Jie didn’t do anything, but Iroh thrust a finger in his face.

“Fire Lord Ozai,” he said. “I request your permission to speak freely.”

Ozai let the corner of his mouth curl into a haughty smile. “Of course, Big Brother. Azula, Zuko, you’re dismissed.”

They left side by side. Azula grabbed onto Zuko’s arm and, as they had two years ago, they ducked behind the curtains surrounding the throne room instead.

“I say this not out of disrespect, but out of the love I hope we both share for your children,” Iroh began. “You cannot continue to indulge their worst instincts.”

The Fire Lord snickered. “A childish fight over a Yin is hardly their worst instincts. If anything, I’m proud of children who would fight for what’s theirs.”

“A person?” Iroh asked, disgusted.

“Iroh,” Ozai’s voice was like a buzzard wasp’s honey: something that seemed sweet and generous but was ultimately rotten. “I appreciate your concern, but I would remind you that this is not an area where you have expertise.”

Azula snickered beside Zuko. He wanted to hit her.

“And I would remind you, Fire Lord Ozai, that I raised a Yang. So I don’t see how I don’t have expertise,” Iroh stood up. “This is a time of great confusion and passion for your children. I know your responsibilities are great, but they would benefit from a guiding hand, from lessons of empathy and respect.”

“And whom have they disrespected? That Yin?” Ozai laughed. “If they ever need to learn respect, I will teach them respect and teach them well, but do not chide me over this nonsense.”

“Ozai,” Iroh stood up. “I beg of you, no matter what our differences, do not turn your children against each—”

“I’ve had enough of this conversation,” Ozai snapped. “Go.”

The siblings slipped out of the room before Iroh. Zuko was ready to talk about how unfair it all was, but Azula said this proved to her that Iroh was weak, and Zuko stayed silent.

~*~*~

The guilt had put Zuko off any future attempts to flirt with the servants, but a new prospect came along.

Within a few weeks, Mai and Ty Lee had returned to the palace for a visit. During the first day he had occasionally noticed the girls coming up behind him, then fleeing when he caught their scent and turned around. On the second day, however, Mai approached him directly.

She’d changed. Mai smelled like a Yin now, and, after he’d gotten over the surprise, he realized she hadn’t worn any perfume to hide it.

“Prince Zuko, um …” Mai twined a bit of her hair between her fingers and smiled as she spoke, then her face froze, and she quickly folded her hands in front of her. “I, um, noticed you never eat with us when we’re here.”

Zuko’s eyes narrowed. This better not be one of Azula’s tricks. “You’re my sister’s friend, aren’t you?”

“So what? I can’t be friends with you?” Mai asked, crossing her arms.

“You haven’t wanted to before.”

“Well, maybe things change.”

Zuko looked her over. He wished Mai had perfume on. Her scent was messing with his head. He wondered if she were close to heat. No, she would have put something on, wouldn’t she? Maybe she forgot.

“You don’t trust me.” Mai said it as a matter of fact, without disappointment.

“I don’t trust Azula,” Zuko said.

“Azula doesn’t know I’ve come to see you,” Mai took another step forward. Her scent scorched his brain. “And if you don’t believe that, Ty Lee’s told her I’m sick, and I told the guard not to let her into the room where I’m staying.”

Zuko wondered when he’d started breathing so hard. “Are you sure you’re not ‘sick’ now?” he asked.

Mai smiled, lifted her hand to his face. “I don’t know. Maybe. Want to take me back to my room?”

Zuko swallowed. He guessed she didn’t forget a thing.

~*~*~

Something in the back of Zuko’s brain told him this was a very bad idea.

He pulled his lips away from Mai’s for the third time since they’d come to her room, locked the door and fallen onto the bed. They were clothed – he wasn’t that stupid, yet – but she had one of her legs wrapped around his waist, and it was difficult not to pull her forward.

“I …. I thought you just wanted to eat,” Zuko said.

“I did,” Mai’s voice was quieter, breathier than usual. She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “This was your idea.”

Zuko frowned. “You came to me without wearing perfume.”

“Ugh,” Mai pushed him away, almost stumbling over her loose and flowing clothes, and sat up on the bed. “I didn’t ask you to give in.”

Zuko wanted to growl at her, although he wasn’t sure if he was more frustrated because of her attitude or because the Yang part of him wanted her back in his arms. “Well, I’ll just go then.”

Mai snarled back. “I’d rather you would if you think a part of my body is some sort of trick.”

So that’s what this was all about. Zuko sighed and sat down again. “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. This is just strange for me. I’ve known you for years as my sister’s friend. I think I pushed you in a fountain once. I don’t really know you at all.”

The frown on Mai’s face deepened. “So you knew those servants you flirted with better than me?”

“How did you …?” Zuko asked, and then he did growl. Azula. Of course. 

On the other hand, maybe he had been a little ridiculous lately.

“No,” Zuko said with a sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He was glad to admit that, he thought to himself sarcastically. Surely he looked like a great and powerful Yang. Well, maybe the problem was with her. Weren’t Yins supposed to be eternal flames of passion? Despite her smell, Mai was more like waning embers beneath mounds of soot.

Mai moved closer to him. She placed her hand on one of his knees, searched his face. Zuko thought maybe she didn’t know what she was doing either. He remembered what his uncle said about most people not knowing what they are, and the conversation between Mai and Ty Lee he’d overheard.

Zuko placed his hands on Mai’s shoulders and kissed her again. She kissed back eagerly, wrapping her arms around his neck. Her long sleeves felt like some sort of odd blanket on his shoulders. She did the same with her legs around his waist and a fire lit in his brain. He bit down on her bottom lip, making her groan. Then he thrust his forearm against her chest between her shoulders. He fumbled for her cloth belt with his other hand.

“Wait, I’m …” Mai closed her eyes, sighed. “I’m going into heat tomorrow. I know it.”

Zuko felt his face flush. Then he felt giddy. Was this really happening?

“I’m not asking you to be my bondmate or anything. I don’t want you to knot in me. But … would you be my first? I want it to be you, Zuko. And I want it to be tomorrow.”

Zuko thought of all the things he should be saying. He barely knew her. This was too fast. Could he really trust her? But Mai was pretty and smelled wonderful; and he was thirteen and a Yang.

He agreed.

~*~*~

Zuko hadn’t seen her coming.

Later, when he tried to accept what had happened, he told himself that he never could have guessed that Ty Lee would attack him. He had thought she wanted to encourage Mai. But as he lay on the floor outside Mai’s room, his sides and shoulders aching from Ty Lee’s jabs, he could only wonder why this was happening.

“I’m sorry.” Ty Lee crouched down next to him, her fists balled up near her chin like she was imitating a mouse. “She didn’t lie to you, okay? We didn’t know how Azula felt. That’s all.”

“What are you saying to him?” Azula’s steps reverberated through the floor before Zuko could see her.

“Nothing!” Ty Lee shrieked. She crawled over to Azula, kissed her hands before rising and kissing her again on the lips. Azula embraced her and kissed back eagerly.

Zuko forced himself to move his arms, tried to push himself upright. It hurt to get his arms in front of him, to try to lift his shoulders from the floor. “What kind of sick game are you playing?”

“I should ask you that, Zuzu,” Azula crouched in front of him, gripped his chin and forced it up so it was just starting to ache. “Your pathetic attempts to impress the Yin servants were one thing, but did you really think I’d let you be the first to touch my dear, dear friend?”

Zuko strained, inwardly screamed at the muscles in his legs to move. “H-how did you –?”

“I could smell you on her, you idiot!” Azula snapped. She gripped harder on his face. “Did you really think you could steal her away making a stupid mistake like that?”

“Steal her away?” Zuko sputtered. “Mai came to me! It’s me she wants. Not you.”

“What are you, an Air Nomad?” Azula pushed his face away, then grabbed onto his ponytail and yanked him back hard, making him cry out. “You know what the problem is with you, Zuzu? You’re entitled. I don’t care what Mom said about how you keep fighting even though it’s hard. Feh. What have you had to fight for? When Dad dies they’ll hand you the country because you were born first, not because you’ll be any good at it, just like they would have done to Uncle. You always fight badly and then get surprised when you don’t win.”

Azula slammed Zuko’s face into the floor. He could feel his nose start to bleed.

“Not that it matters,” Azula said. “You’ve failed and I’ve won again. Some Yang you are. Some ruler you are. Then again, that’s the trouble with being a ruler, isn’t it, Zuzu? In the end, there can only be one.”

Azula and Ty Lee then went into Mai’s room, closing the door behind them.

Zuko could move now, but it was agony. He sat up on the floor, slumped over on himself. He wasn’t sure what was going on inside Mai’s room, but in the new quiet he could smell her.

“Get up,” he whispered to himself. He wiped the blood from his nose. “Get up. Get up!”

Zuko forced himself to his feet, still slumped over on wobbly legs. As he uprighted himself, he groaned and rushed at the door, pounding his shoulder against it. The scent was stronger now, and as the numbness began to fade from his body, he could feel the desire burning underneath. This was taking too long. Mai was his and he wanted her now.

He let out a yell, tried to firebend. He failed. He tried again, putting all his rage and desire into the blast.

The door blew in, disintegrated into flames. As Zuko stepped inside, the first person he saw was Ty Lee. She sat at the foot of the bed in her shoes and pants, her arms crossed over her naked chest. Her eyes were wide and red.

“It wasn’t what I thought,” Ty Lee whimpered, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I thought I wouldn’t feel a thing. But I want everything. I can’t think. How can any of you stand it?”

She looked so sad that Zuko didn’t know what to do for the moment. She was emitting a scent that was so strange, something that made him want to fight her like a Yang but subdue her like a Yin at the same time.

“Oh, stop your babbling!” Azula was on top of the bed on all fours, her pants around her knees as someone writhed beneath the covers under her. “So you’re a pervert instead. Who cares? Get up here and have fun or be quiet. Right, Mai?”

Mai groaned in response. “Azula, I don’t care! Just get this feeling out of me. I can’t take it anymore!”

To Zuko her words were like being jabbed by Ty Lee all over again. “Mai?”

Azula turned around, a nasty smile on her makeup-smeared lips. Mai pushed herself up. Azula had gotten to her. Her pants had been pulled down, the buns in her hair were coming loose. Mai’s mouth dropped open when she saw him.

“Fine!” Zuko screamed at Azula. “Have her!”

He stormed out of the room. As he turned the corner, he heard steps behind him. He didn’t need to look back to see who it was; his nose let him know.

“Zuko …”

“Get away from me.”

Mai grabbed onto his shoulder. Zuko whirled around and grabbed her by the waist, pushed her hard against the wall. She pulled a stiletto out of her sleeve and pressed it to his neck.

Zuko breathed harsh and shallow, trying to control himself and not hurt himself on the blade as he spoke. “How could you?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Mai said. “I can’t think about anything else. I can’t make this go away. It’s hurting me, Zuko.”

He let her go, pulled his hands away. “You try to seem like you’re so much better than any other Yin. Well, you’re not. You’re as weak as the worst of them. You disgust me!”

Mai’s eyes turned dark with rage. “You’re going to play that game? Well, what kind of Yang lets his Yin get stolen? You’re the one who’s weak!”

“You’re not my Yin, Mai.” Zuko turned and walked away.

There was a thud behind him. Despite his anger, Zuko looked back. Mai was curled up in a fetal position, rocking back and forth.

“Go away ...,” Mai whimpered. She clutched at her belly, hit it with her fist. “I don’t want this. I don’t want this. Go away.”

Zuko hesitated, but then returned to her side. She yelled and tried to push him away. He growled and gripped her beneath her arms and legs, hoisting her into his arms. Mai demanded he put her down, told him that he was weak and that she didn’t want him anymore, would never want children like him. Zuko’s body was screaming at him but he ignored it, kept walking and carrying her.

Eventually they came to a chamber for Yins. When he tried the door, it opened. Good, no one was inside. Zuko put Mai down.

“Here,” Zuko said. “There’s stuff in there to help you. The door locks from the inside.”

Mai’s eyes were glassy. After a moment she stepped inside the room. She looked back at Zuko, seemed to be considering something, but then turned her head down and shut the door.

~*~*~

Zuko didn’t expect Mai to run into his arms the next morning. Nevertheless, seeing her with Azula was hard to take.

The three girls were lounging by the turtle-duck pond the next day. Azula sat cross-legged beneath the tree, Ty Lee’s head in her lap. Whatever Ty Lee’s reservations last night, they must have been dealt with because she had a wide smile on her face, hummed and lazily paddled her feet. Mai sat on the other side of Azula, twirling a stiletto in her hand. Azula touched her knee. Mai smiled and kissed her.

Zuko could then see her eyes widen. She’d seen him. Azula growled and pulled Mai closer, grasped Ty Lee’s hand. He left.

Sometime later, after Mai and Ty Lee had gone home, Zuko passed by the pond. Azula was there still. When she saw Zuko, she wiped the tears from her eyes, threw a hunk of bread directly at one of the turtle-ducks, and stormed off.

He didn’t follow her.

That was two months ago. A month later, he would be burned.

~*~*~

Members of the crew stared at him as he passed by. They tried not to make it obvious, but Zuko knew they were looking. He focused on the ever-present anger in his chest, told himself it didn’t matter.

Zuko told the captain to set course for the Northern Air Temple, then looked for his uncle.

Iroh was on the starboard deck, his arms folded over the side as he looked out at sea. Zuko stood next to him, unsure of what to say. The wind blew off the ocean. He caught his uncle’s unconcealed scent again. The first few days on the ship it had surprised the crew, as well. But now none of them noticed.

“How did you find out?” Zuko asked.

Iroh chuckled. “Oh, it’s the same old story. I thought I knew how the world was, and then I fell in love. But, I think that is what happens to everybody, even if they’re not like me.”

“Was … was that the person who, um, gave you Lu Ten?”

His uncle’s jovial smile turned into a frown. “Why does everyone ask that? What does it matter? He was my son, and I loved him. Whether I carried him to life or not doesn’t change that.”

Zuko hung his head. “Sorry.”

Uncle Iroh sighed. “A handful of people knew about me. But I kept it secret because I wanted to protect the other person in all this. They begged for privacy, and even though that person is long gone I am a man of my word.”

He paused for a moment, stood up and clasped his hands together so his sleeves covered them.

“I didn’t grow up with your father, you know. I’m over two decades older than him. By the time he was born I was fighting in the war. I’d hoped that for you and Azula, being so close in age, it would be different. Do you remember that time at Ember Island when she tried to walk by grabbing your shirt? You acted so angry, but I could tell a part of you was having fun. ”

Zuko gripped the side of the ship. “I can’t think about that. I can’t trust her.”

“No. I wouldn’t either,” Uncle Iroh said. “I meant it as an apology.”

Zuko said nothing. He didn’t want to feel regret. He wanted the world to burn.

His uncle suggested they go eat some roast eel, but Zuko wasn’t hungry. Iroh patted him on the shoulder and left him alone.

Zuko walked near the ship’s bow, looked out at the skyline. The sun was setting behind them. If he’d turned around, looked back toward home, he knew he could have seen a brilliant red and orange sunset rather than the darkening sky and clouds ahead.

Mai, Azula, his father – they had all been right about him. He had failed. He had been weak. He had lost his honor. His uncle may have been a … an in-between, but he was a better example of a Yang than him.

But Zuko was still a Yang, and he had hope. The Avatar was out there, and if he was an Air Nomad, then he was probably a Yin, was someone that Zuko could scent out and capture. And Zuko knew if anyone could get him that only he had the drive, the passion to do it. He would prove himself worthy of his father’s love, as good as any other Yang.

No, not as good as any other Yang. He needed to be the best. He needed to dedicate everything to his goal. From now on he wouldn’t care about mating, wouldn’t be so easy to show mercy, wouldn’t do anything but concentrate on becoming the ruler he was meant to be.

There could only be one, Azula had said. One day it would be him.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank everyone for the incredible response and support I've gotten for this story. When I began it, taking an already very controversial trend in fandom and applying it to a show that didn't have many fanfics in this vein, I was unsure anyone would like it. I'm so glad to find out that so many people have.
> 
> I hope you liked this story, and I hope to return to this universe one day, hopefully sooner rather than later. And, once again: thank you, thank you, thank you all.


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